The Rich Man's Wife Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

The Rich Man's Wife Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Brian Orndorf August 12, 2018

Branded a star on the rise in the 1990s, Halle Berry graduated quickly to major studios roles, with Hollywood spending the better part of the decade figuring out just what to do with the actress, who achieved some visibility in “Boomerang,” “Jungle Fever,” and “The Flintstones.” I’m not sure Berry was ready to carry her own movie with 1996’s “The Rich Man’s Wife,” and the production basically agrees, with writer/director Amy Holden Jones left with little thespian oomph as she tries to manufacture a classic thriller for a modern age. Berry is limp here, backed by several key miscastings, leaving Jones with little room to take something traditional and give it significant personality, helping to up what are weirdly low stakes for a thriller. “The Rich Man’s Wife” is a drag, but one with potential, working half-speed on a few promising ideas, only to have Jones weighed down by the actors and the feature’s increasing reliance on ludicrousness to connect the dots.

Josie (Halle Berry) is married to Tony (Christopher McDonald), a movie studio executive, but feelings faded long ago for the couple, with his drinking causing her animosity to grow. Josie is sleeping with restaurateur Jake (Clive Owen) on the side, but she holds out some hope for her marriage, agreeing to a cabin weekend to work on their union. However, when Tony is called back to L.A. for business, Josie stays behind, catching the attention of Cole (Peter Green), a local creep who decides to make a move on the single lady when she’s in need of roadside assistance. While the two share intimate ideas on the possibility of Cole murdering Tony, Josie balks, soon forced to use violence to keep Cole away. When Tony decides to clean up his act, Cole guns him down, blackmailing Josie for a $30,000 payment as her once bleakly average life spirals out of control.

Jones is the director of the symbolically charged “The Slumber Party Massacre,” “Maid to Order,” and 1984’s “Love Letters,” slowly but surely working to build a filmography stacked with versatility, making “The Rich Man’s Wife” a natural extension of her creative interests. Paying tribute to the Hitchcockian thriller, Jones is stuck with a familiar plot of miscommunication and murder, tracking Josie’s mounting panic as Cole makes her deepest, darkest fantasy come true, sending her on a downward spiral that complicates an already knotted existence, including a lover in Jake who’s very interested her bank account. Fans of noir are sure to recognize much of what “The Rich Man’s Wife” has to offer, with Jones orchestrating the requisite twists and turns to keep the viewing experience engaging, though she’s not especially strong with pace, finding domestic scenes and Josie’s confrontations with Cole lacking snap, while her command over the cast is troublesome. Greene is especially over the top, trying to work himself into a criminal frenzy when the movie actually needs tighter edits, not broader performances.

Jones also plays loose with perspective, opening the picture in a police station, where Josie, under suspicion for murder, elects to tell her side of the story. The screenplay sticks with this idea for some time, but Jones eventually abandons it, soon taking the action to any character she needs to work through the tale. Potential for trickery or basic urgency is lost midway through the effort, which does return to Josie and the cops without proper emphasis. “The Rich Man’s Wife” plays a very long game of behavior, requiring viewers to stay with shifting allegiances and believe that Josie is somewhat on top of events she’s not connected to. While logic isn’t a pal to the common thriller, Jones doesn’t strengthen connective tissue in the least, while the picture itself snowballs to a conclusion that doesn’t make any sense, choking out whatever tenuous contact with character consistency Jones was maintaining in the first place.

The Rich Man's Wife Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The AVC encoded image (1.85:1 aspect ratio) presentation offers an older Disney master, with the viewing experience providing passable definition when it comes to the careful cinematography of "The Rich Man's Wife." Colors are adequate, doing better with broad hues from sunny locations and period fashions, but age is apparent, while skintones look a bit bloodless at times. Detail is hampered by mild baked-in filtering (bits of haloing are detected), but facial particulars are passable. Texture is acceptable with costuming and set decoration. Delineation struggles with solidification during some low-lit encounters. Source is in fine shape, without major elements of damage.

The Rich Man's Wife Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 2.0 DTS-HD MA track supplies a functional listening event, keeping to a basic balance of dialogue exchanges, giving proper volume to wildly different performances, which never slip into distortive extremes. Scoring retains instrumentation, preserving the lush orchestral mood of the movie. Sound effects retain sharpness, giving gunshots snap. Atmospherics are adequate.

The Rich Man's Wife Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary (sampled) features film historian Jim Hemphill, who provides a near-breathless run of observations and actor resumes for a picture he clearly loves, even going so far as to refer to the screenplay as "masterful." He's eager and educated but periodically at a loss to explain creative motivations, making one wish Amy Holden Jones was involved on the track.

• And a Theatrical Trailer (2:05, SD) is included.

The Rich Man's Wife Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

"The Rich Man's Wife" has an incredibly difficult time building momentum, toying with formula while hinting at fresh directions for this collision of damaged and dangerous people. Suspicions are flaccid, violence is tepid, and payoffs are eye-crossing, but Jones marches on, working with legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler to generate an appealingly stylish feature that does well with the visual conventions of the genre. Dramatically, "The Rich Man's Wife" doesn't have the refinement or the vision to go from one extreme to the other, while dependence on Berry doesn't provide the emotional support necessary to slide into the criminal charms of this frustratingly unsatisfying endeavor.