Neo-Noir Film Review: The Last Seduction (1994)

The Last Seduction has long been one of my favorite neo-noir films. You might think it's a little derivative with similarities to Body Heat and a couple of nodding references to Double Indemnity, and maybe it ism, but even after several watchings it is still very entertaining.

The Last Seduction is available on Amazon Prime streaming. At least in the US.
Full cast and crew on IMDB.

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As the film opens we see Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino) pacing around a New York City boiler room berating the people making calls selling coin sets. She has an acerbic delivery and would be a match for Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross. At the same time,  a drug deal is going down with a white guy selling pharmaceutical grade cocaine to to two black dealers. They mess with him a little then give him his $700K.

When Bridget gets home we find out that the white guy is Clay Gregory (Bill Paxton), a sketchy doctor who sell prescriptions to hop heads. While Clay is in the shower, Bridget takes the money and runs, gets to her car, and leaves the city.

Almost out of gas, she stops in the small town of Beston (near Buffalo). She goes into a bar across from the gas station. She oozes contempt for the locals and with her big city acerbic mode of speech, annoys the bartender who pointedly ignores her. Coming to her "rescue" is Mike (Peter Berg). Her approach to letting Mike take her back to his place really needs to be seen and I'm not going to attempt to describe it. You will laugh and cringe.

Bridget needs a place to lie low because Clay will be looking for her and the next day she sees a help wanted ad for an insurance company needing someone to develop leads. With her experience she is quickly hired. She convinces the company that she is hiding from an abusive husband and the let her use the name Wendy Kroy. She soon finds out that Mike is a claims adjuster with the same company and they establish a sexual relationship.

An offhand remark by Mike about being able to identify cheating husbands cross referencing credit reports and insurance records gives Wendy/Bridget an idea. She figures that they can access the company database to figure out men who are likely to have mistresses. Wendy suggests to Mike that they could sell the wives on the idea of murdering their husbands for a cut of the insurance.

I'm going to stop with the plot summary now because you really need see what happens next. There is no way do justice to what happens next.

The Last Seduction is thoroughly noir. You see in in the theme, in innocent dupe in the clutches of a highly manipulative femme fatale as well camera techniques (lighting, angles), a jazz score that flows through the film. Also there is very good noir dialogue. For example:

A lawyer to Bridget: Anyone check you for a hearbeat recently?

Mike: I'm trying to figure out whether you're a total fucking bitch or not.
Bridget: I am a total fucking bitch.

Mike: I'm starting to feel like a ...
Bridget: Sex object?

The two main characters play their roles perfectly. If you know your film noir you'll probably think of Body Heat.

Linda Fiorentino's Bridget/Wendy puts the fatale in femme. She is brilliant and you can't help but admire her. She is almost too noir, so completely amoral that she nearly becomes a caricature of the femme fatale. Throughout the film she demonstrates an ability to analyze the situations in which she finds herself and adjust accordingly. How she takes care of the private detective who tracks her down is another scene that needs to be seen to be appreciated. It's one of my favorite scenes in the film.

Mike plays the perfect foil to Wendy schemes. Being a small town boy he is no match for Wendy and doesn't realize how he has been manipulated until too late. He thinks he is acting out of love but doesn't realize that Wendy is incapable of love.

Keywords: neo-noir, film noir, crime film, erotic thriller