‘Final Analysis’: A Thriller Without the Master’s Touch

The filmmaking generation that grew up with Alfred Hitchcock created thrillers that at worst were Hitchcock rip-offs and, at best, as with prime Brian De Palma, neo-Hitchcock fantasias.

The new psychological thriller “Final Analysis” (citywide) is directed by Phil Joanou, who is still in his 20s and one of the first thriller filmmakers of the post-De Palma era. Although shrouded in the immense shadow of The Master, most of the film’s effects are derived not from Hitchcock but from his imitators. The double-removed flimsiness shows. Watching this San Francisco-based film (rated R for sensuality, language and violence) is a bit like looking at “Vertigo” through several heavy layers of scrim.

Richard Gere plays Isaac Barr, a forensic psychiatrist who starts out treating a disturbed tease (Uma Thurman) and ends up passionately enmeshed with her older sister, Heather (Kim Basinger).

This business of psychiatrists getting romantically involved with their patients’ siblings seems to be in the air these days. When Isaac shows up at a psychiatric seminar, you half expect to see Barbra Streisand’s Dr. Lowenstein sitting across the aisle.

We’re supposed to see that Isaac is sodden with introspection, worn down by the litany of his patients’ woes and, without fully realizing it, he longs to be startled by life. Isaac may be a psychiatrist but he’s really a lot closer to the private eyes of film noir, the noble suckers who got stung by black widows in tight skirts. Isaac is a species of patsy because, although it’s his business to “understand” people, he’s hopeless in the real world of connivance outside his office.

Heather, who is married to a brutal Greek-American gangster (Eric Roberts), has been diagnosed with “pathological intoxication”--she can’t sip liquor without going blooey. (This is the same malady Basinger suffered from in the Blake Edwards’ comedy “Blind Date.” Are the producers trying to tell her something?) In a way, Isaac is pathologically intoxicated by Heather. When they’re together, you expect a shower of sparks.

You rarely get them, though. Gere and Basinger have paired once before, in the 1986 “No Mercy,” and the chemistry wasn’t conspicuous then, either. Gere can be riveting when he’s playing a smarmy heel, as in “Internal Affairs.” Nastiness seems to rouse him out of his usual blank-eyed semi-stupor. But he’s a mellow dupe here, a good guy. Gere doesn’t have much inner life as an actor, so why would anyone cast him as a psychiatrist?

Basinger doesn’t have much of an inner life either but she doesn’t really need one here. She has a touching, forlorn quality in her early scenes; coming in from the rain for a tryst with Isaac, her hair a haze of curls, she looks like a debauched mermaid. She has a creepy, sisterly simpatico in her scenes with Thurman, who looks great--famished by her fantasies. Basinger’s scenes opposite Roberts have a frightening voltage because Roberts is as hard-edged as Basinger is soft; he’s alarmingly convincing as a terrorist of the psyche.

But most of the time we’re stuck in the film noir mire with our two endangered lovebirds, with the interminable plot twists functioning as jolts to relieve the boredom. One of the ways you can spot a post-Hitchcock thriller is by the pointlessness of the set pieces. Things happen for a fancy effect and not to drive the plot forward in any way that makes sense. Sample mystery: Why is Basinger’s hair curly before she beds down with Gere and straight as an ironing board right afterward?

The assumption seems to be that TV-bred audiences are so accustomed to shock cuts and their own short attention spans that they won’t mind all the plot puzzlements as long as there’s something--anything--to look at. The Hitchcock imitators learned the wrong lesson: They picked up his camera tricks but dispensed with his steel-trap narrative underpinnings.

Without those underpinnings, “Final Analysis,” which was scripted by Wesley Strick, seems like filigree. And not even the kind of fun trash filigree that the movie ads promised. Joanou’s direction is too flamboyantly arty to be much fun. (He shoots a lengthy dinner spat between Roberts and Basinger almost entirely in side close-ups. What, no coverage?) He installs a lighthouse under the Golden Gate Bridge and then shoots it as if from a seagull’s lofty point of view. Joanou’s direction is a hefty dose of pathological intoxication.

‘Final Analysis’

Richard Gere: Isaac Barr

Kim Basinger: Heather Evans

Uma Thurman: Diana Baylor

Eric Roberts: Jimmy Evans

A Warner Brothers release of a Witt/Thomas production in association with Roven-Cavallo Entertainment. Director Phil Joanou. Producers Charles Roven, Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas. Executive producers Richard Gere, Maggie Wilde. Screenplay by Wesley Strick. Cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth. Editor Thom Noble. Costumes Aude Bronson-Howard. Music George Fenton. Production design Dean Tavoularis. Art director Angelo Graham. Set decorator Bob Nelson. Sound Lee Orloff. Running time: 2 hours, 4 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (violence, nudity, sexual situations.).