Plot
Suzanne Stone is an aspiring TV personality who will do anything to be in the spotlight- including enlisting 3 teenagers to kill her husband.
Release Year: 1995
Rating: 6.8/10 (21,923 voted)
Critic's Score: 86/100
Director:
Gus Van Sant
Stars: Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix
Storyline Suzanne Stone (Maretto) knows exactly what she wants. She wants to be a television newscaster and she is willing to do ANYTHING to get what she wants. What she lacks in intelligence, she makes up for in cold determination and diabolical wiles. As she pursues her goal with relentless focus, she is forced to destroy anything and anyone that may stand in her way, regardless of the ultimate cost or means necessary.
Writers: Joyce Maynard, Buck Henry
Cast: Nicole Kidman
-
Suzanne Stone Maretto
Matt Dillon
-
Larry Maretto
Joaquin Phoenix
-
Jimmy Emmett
Casey Affleck
-
Russel Hines
Illeana Douglas
-
Janice Maretto
Alison Folland
-
Lydia Mertz
Dan Hedaya
-
Joe Maretto
Wayne Knight
-
Ed Grant
Kurtwood Smith
-
Earl Stone
Holland Taylor
-
Carol Stone
Susan Traylor
-
Faye Stone
Maria Tucci
-
Angela Maretto
Tim Hopper
-
Mike Warden
Michael Rispoli
-
Ben DeLuca
Buck Henry
-
Mr. H. Finlaysson
Taglines:
She was prepared to go all the way... for what she wanted.
Release Date: 6 October 1995
Filming Locations: Brampton, Ontario, Canada
Box Office Details
Budget: $20,000,000
(estimated)
Gross: $21,284,514
(USA)
Technical Specs
Runtime:|
Argentina:
Did You Know?
Trivia: Meg Ryan was offered 5 million to play the role of Suzanne Stone and still turned it down. Nicole Kidman agreed to play the role for 2 million.
Goofs:
Errors in geography:
This story takes place in Little Hope, NH. Early in the movie, a newspaper article entitled "Sex, Violence and the Weather" shows a map of southern New Hampshire, with an arrow pointing to Little Hope. But the arrow actually points to a location in Massachusetts.
Quotes: Suzanne Stone Maretto:
You know Mr. Gorbachev, the guy that ran Russia for so long? I am a firm believer that he would still be in power today if he had had that ugly purple thing taken off his head.
User Review
This one will stay with you a little bit
Rating: 9/10
Clever story with more depth that appears at first blush, directed with
irony and a sardonic sense of humor by Gus Van Sant. Nicole Kidman
plays an especially shallow TV weather person who gets some grunge kids
to kill her husband for her. Her motive is, as Illeana Douglas, who
plays the sister-in-law, says, "he got in her way." This is a nice
study of narcissism metastasized into psychopathology. She is
headstrong, motivated and rather stupid. She thinks only of herself and
would do anything for herself and would do anything to anybody who got
in her way. And amazingly, she does.
Matt Dillon is wasted as the husband (in more ways than one). I'm
surprised he agreed to do the part. Kidman is mesmerizing and makes us
believe in a slightly unbelievable character. We've all known
narcissistic little darlings who would kill you for the right shade of
eye shadow, but to see it acted out so coldly and with such appalling
stupidity, yet with a psychology so bizarre that it has to be real,
fairly takes your breath away. It was especially apt that she had him
killed so that her pointless little docu-drama "Teens Speak Out" could
become newsworthy enough for national exposure. Consicously she doesn't
realize this: she has no introspection; she just acts.
Also cute is the way the picture is framed: a pseudo-documentary within
a pseudo-documentary. Everything is so well orchestrated that when
Kidman gets her surprising, but entirely appropriate comeuppance at the
end, we are quite pleased.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut
to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it
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