Simpatico (1999)

Some movies disappear off the face of the earth but not always deservedly so.  The late night BBC screening a few days ago was the first reappearance of this movie, which with its high-powered cast -- Jeff Bridges, Nick Nolte, Sharon Stone, Albert Finney, and Catherine Keener -- and source from a Sam Sheperd play might have promised so much more.  While all five actors have their moments, at times they seem to be acting in different films, and only Finney and Keener really impress.

It doesn't help that the story is confusing and that the backstory is told to us in dribs and drabs.  It seems that when Bridges, Nolte and Stone were teenagers (and they are embodied in three younger actors who just could never have grown up to be those three) they embraced a horse-racing scam and made some quick money which changed their lives, but not necessarily for the better.  To get away with the scam, having failed to bribe racing commissioner Finney with an insufficient monetary sop, they used the young Stone to compromise him sexually with some pretty pornographic photos.  Years on Finney has resurfaced under a pseudonym, Bridges is a successful breeder with an unsuccessful marriage to Stone (who was Nolte's squeeze), and Nolte is pretty much a disheveled down-and-out involved in a non-sexual relationship with Keener.  He still hangs on to the incriminating negatives and dreams of revenge.  However how the three main characters finally end up seems both strange and unbelievable and their motives are in so many ways beyond the viewer's comprehension, as are Finney's, who refuses to be intimidated by past indiscretions.  I still think that Bridges is a fine and underrated actor, but his  was an impossible role to understand in this shiny but finally muddled mess.

Tags: Simpatico, Jeff Bridges, racing scam