"Fatale" not trashy enough or legitimate enough to be a hard-hitting potboiler

Fatale (2020)

Niche director Deon Taylor (2019’s “Black and Blue”) fancies himself a contemporary purveyor of hard-hitting potboilers with predominantly Black casts. He’s at his best when leaning into the tawdry craziness, like 2019’s gleefully nutty “The Intruder,” but here, this would-be noir thriller boils itself down to a “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” cautionary tale where a crazy white woman ruins a Black man’s life. It’s no coincidence that “Fatale” aims to be yet another twist on “Fatal Attraction,” which has already been ripped off countless times, most similarly to 2009’s “Obsessed.” It has a few mildly clever turns, but Taylor never allows the material to really get trashy and steamy or be legitimately about more than what it’s about.


Successful L.A. sports agent Derrick Tyler, played by the striking Michael Ealy, is one of those movie characters who makes one fatal mistake to ruin his seemingly perfect life, and Michael Douglas might have played him over twenty years ago. Derrick has a luxury lifestyle and a beautiful Hollywood Hills home with its own infinity pool and a turntable driveway for his sports car, but his marriage with career-minded realtor Traci (Damaris Lewis) is on the rocks. Leaving to go off to Vegas for a lavish bachelor party, friend and business partner Race (Mike Colter) takes off Derrick’s wedding ring to allow him to relax and have fun as a bachelor. From afar, Derrick notices an attractive woman (Hilary Swank). At the bar, she introduces herself as Val and he gives her a fake name, and they engage in some stiff flirting, until Derrick accidentally spills his drink on Val’s cleavage (which she makes him clean up). They grind out their mutual attraction on the dance floor and take to a hotel room to perform the deed. After this one-night stand, the first clue that things aren’t quite right with Val is when she tells Derrick his cell phone is locked in the room’s safe and that he can’t have it until he shags her one more time. Once Derrick is home and tries redeeming himself with his wife, the couple experiences a break-in and a violent scuffle with a masked man. What are the odds, then, when the detective attached to his case is (drum roll) Val. It was a one-time thing for Derrick, but Val wants more.


Written by David Loughery (who, having penned both "Obsessed" and "The Intruder," works again in familiar territory), “Fatale” seems to think it has more on its mind than it really does, like commenting on the criminal justice system when it concerns a wrongfully accused Black man. It begins with Derrick’s self-serious narration and then ends with a ridiculous “don’t sleep with a cop” lesson voiced by L.A. radio hosts. You know where some of “Fatale” will go, but it is initially enticing to see how much Val can make Derrick squirm, knowing that she can use her authority against him in a steady game of blackmail and murder. Things really fly off the rails, though, when Derrick frustratingly becomes a patsy. As it turns out, too, everyone is out for themselves and there is really no one to like. 


Hilary Swank has proven time and time again what a wonderful actress she is and even had a blast tearing it up as an elite liberal in “The Hunt,” but she is seriously miscast here as a jilted predator. Apart from one unintentionally funny freak-out in her car with her eyes bulging and a sequence where Val goes into pulpy shotgun-shooting mode in her industrial loft, Swank remains steely and glowering. Even a subplot concerning Val’s corrupt politician ex-husband (Danny Pino)—and flashes of her past involving parental negligence that lost her custody rights of seeing her now-paralyzed daughter—don’t really lend much more understanding of Val. This woman clearly has a chemical imbalance and an addiction, but the film glosses over characterization that would paint her with more complexity. Val never boils a pet rabbit, but there sure is a last-minute knife attack that would make Glenn Close smile. 


Besides a bombastic score full of sudden musical stings working overtime to thrill, “Fatale” manages to be too safe. It doesn’t elicit the guilty-pleasure thrills and steaminess of 2015’s “The Boy Next Door” or even Taylor’s own “From Hell…” thriller, where Michael Ealy starred opposite Dennis Quaid. It does look sleek—Taylor brings along notable cinematographer Dante Spinotti again—and there is a lurid watchability to seeing pretty people outsmart each other. In the end, though, “Fatale” is like a one-night stand itself: intermittently salacious but awkward and disposable.


Grade: C


Lionsgate released “Fatale” (102 min.) in theaters on December 18, 2020, followed by an upcoming PVOD release on January 8, 2020.

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