JAGGED EDGE (Richard Marquand, 1985) is one of those films that give the impression that Glenn Close’s function in American Cinema of the 80s was to be the target for a crude misogyny before deflecting, redirecting, making the audience feel the pleasure in it whilst being allowed the safety valve of disavowal. The film begins with a brutal scene of a woman being tied up, cut with a hunting knife, raped; with the B word smeared in blood over the bed. Half my students would have walked out before the film even got going, missing out on the revenge part at the end where Glenn kills that man as he tries the same on her. It’s a film without the visual delights of style generally offered by noir but with the not inconsiderable pleasure of watching Glenn Close at her prime, beautiful (the producer was banned from the set because he didn’t think so), emotionally transparent, cooly intense. It’s a vehicle for her and a box office hit before FATAL ATTRACTION (Adrian Lyne, 1987). Jeff Bridges is the sexy husband who might have killed his wife. Robert Loggia is the detective, a father figure for Glenn, and nominated for an Academy Award. It’s written by Joe Esterhaz, in a cruder vein, pulpier, less well-directed but better constructed than BASIC INSTINCTS (Paul Verhoeven, 1992). It’s no masterpiece but does produce the shocks and shakes like the shock mechanism it fundamentally is. It holds up forty years after it was first released. One of the INDICATOR disks I bought at Film Noir UK.

José Arroyo