MOVIE REVIEWS : Innocent Gets Drawn in Over His Head in ‘Bad Influence’

What would be the ultimate enticement for a bright, fast-track yuppie today? If he’s “Bad Influence’s” socially hesitant Michael Boll (James Spader), it would be cool . He has the rest, in triplicate. The enameled fiancee, a Hancock Park daddy’s girl who will program him for success relentlessly. A crack at the senior marketing analyst’s job at his brokerage firm. A Mid-Wilshire apartment just waiting to be done by Metropolitan Home. Incipient colitis, just waiting to be diagnosed.

But at a trendy L.A. bar, women are more likely to gaze past Michael than lock glances with him. And he could probably graph the rest of his life right now, before he’s 30, and not be off by more than one mid-life love affair.

Then a bar accident drops Alex (Rob Lowe) into Michael’s carefully managed life and the lid comes off. The opposites are attracted, the chemistry of fascination and manipulation begins to work. Actually, “Bad Influence” (citywide) is the rattlingly fine psychological thriller that it is because director Curtis Hanson and writer David Koepp have kept their “what ifs” so close to the bone.

Everyone has known an Alex, or covertly watched one in action. Man or woman, rich or not-yet rich, an Alex is born knowing, born arrogant, a born insider. Occupation? Why do you ask? Beauty? Surprisingly, not required. Although beautiful Alexes are not impossible to find in Los Angeles, the French seem to turn out a high number of ugly Alexes who do just fine.

And, coming off his pretty-boy-with-dubious-morals in “Masquerade” and a mite of personal notoriety that exploded just as “Bad Influence” was in preproduction, Rob Lowe is not impossible casting as this Alex, a drifter draped in Armani. Lowe’s assumed French and Italian accents may be pretty funny, but he’s caught the charm, the insinuation and the murmuring menace of the guy dead on, and the sneering fury of his last exchange comes from a Lowe we haven’t seen before.

Make no mistake, though, it is Spader’s film, and Spader’s character who must struggle through the mounting terrors unleashed when he lets this cool stranger into his life. If “sex, lies, and videotape” hinted at Spader’s fascination, “Bad Influence” confirms it; he is one of a handful of startling young American actors whose range has barely begun to be tapped.

Michael first tests Alex’s hard-ball suggestion for beating his office rival at his own smarmy game. When that succeeds--triumphantly--he follows in Alex’s wake for a night on the town, letting the old hand toss him the intriguing Claire (Lisa Zane, simply fine), who seems Alex’s match in chic rootlessness. After that, the hooks are set, with horrifying and finally deadly results. How do you get the devil out of your living room when you’ve invited him in and given him your key?

The story is enriched by the presence of Michael’s sandy-haired older brother, Pismo (the splendid Christian Clemenson), last seen--some 100 pounds heavier--as the unflappable video editor in “Broadcast News.” Pismo may have spent the last decade or so applying himself to controlled substances uncontrollably, but he’s the conscience of the piece and his emergence from years of paranoia to decisive action is one of the joys of the film.

So is the emergence of director Hanson, remembered in many quarters for his screenplay adaptation of one of the canniest thrillers of the ‘70s, “Silent Partner,” a cat-and-mouse game between bank teller Elliott Gould and psychopathic killer Christopher Plummer. His bent for the bent grew after his writing and direction of the sleek, sexy “Bedroom Window,” another situation of an “innocent” drawn in way over his head.

Hanson’s work with actors is one of his strengths; he seems to cast with an eye toward subtlety and against expectation: in addition to Zane and Clemenson, please notice Kathleen Wilhoite, last seen as a druggy burnout in “Everybody Wins,” here as Michael’s secretary. “Bad Influence” also has a richness of vision and carefully observed detail: everything from Claire’s wardrobe to Pismo’s rooming house, where a girl stays crashed out in the crummy downstairs couch as all hell breaks loose around her.

For all this, we should celebrate cinematographer Robert Elswit, costume designer Malissa Daniel, editor Bonnie Koehler, production designer Ron Foreman and the music of Trevor Jones.

And, given the constant invention and the chillingly good ear of writer Koepp, you can forgive him for borrowing first from co-writer Hanson--the body in the rug in “Silent Partner”--then from the great marital-humiliation scene in Irvin Kershner’s “Loving” for a couple of “Bad Influence’s” peak moments. As we all know, there really is nothing new on the screen, since the only truly fitting title for “Bad Influence” is “sex, lies and videotape.”