MOVIE REVIEW : Friedkin’s ‘Jade’ Mines Familiar Territory

Watching “Jade” is such a hollow experience it’s hard to work up the energy to dismiss it. A movie where the car chases have more personality than the people, its monotone acting and recycled plot make one wonder, not for the first time, how something this tired ever got made.

Prime mover here is screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, last heard from on “Showgirls,” whose career is not exactly going from strength to strength. His script baldly rips off his earlier “Basic Instinct” and leaves a collection of loose ends as tangled as Medusa’s head and just as likely to petrify viewers.

Based, like “Basic Instinct,” in San Francisco, “Jade” familiarly opens with the murder of a wealthy man in his handsomely furnished mansion. Inside the dead man’s safe the police discover a roll of film depicting the governor of California (Richard Crenna) having sex with a prostitute (model Angie Everhart).

Instead of a detective, the investigator this time around is Assistant Dist. Atty. David Corelli (David Caruso), who, in typical Eszterhas fashion, soon finds himself up to his neck in the sleazy side of life and searching for a prostitute named Jade who may be the key to the case.

Also drawn into the affair are clinical psychologist and best-selling author Trina Gavin (Linda Fiorentino), Corelli’s ex-lover, and her current husband, top defense attorney Matt Gavin (Chazz Palminteri), who also happens to be Corelli’s best friend. All three leads are coming off successful work elsewhere and presumably took these stick-figure roles because their agents were able to negotiate hefty salary increases all around.

With its pseudo-raunchy dialogue and slimy situations, “Jade” retreads familiar territory for both director William Friedkin and Eszterhas. And despite the writer’s recent public protestations that his women are strong masters of their own fate, he once again hasn’t been able to come up with female protagonists who aren’t victims or hookers or, more likely, both.

Even if you can stomach that kind of nonsense, “Jade” has a fatal problem in its lackluster ending, so unfocused it seems like part of the movie has been lopped off with scissors. After placing several characters in considerable jeopardy, “Jade” neglects to explain who did what to whom and why. For all the information we’re given, the filmmakers might as well have stuck a “tough luck, suckers” logo on the screen.

Director Friedkin, who made his reputation with the chase-heavy “The French Connection,” has provided a couple of well-crafted jaunts through Chinatown here, and veteran cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak brings a fine degree of professionalism to the visual side. But apparently the director spent so much time worrying about the subliminal visual clues he says he put into “Jade” that he forgot to include any real ones.

* MPAA rating: R, for grisly after-views of murder victims, violence, language and strong scenes of aberrant sexuality. Times guidelines: numerous extremely unpleasant scenes.

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‘Jade’

David Caruso: David Corelli

Linda Fiorentino: Trina Gavin

Chazz Palminteri: Matt Gavin

Michael Biehn: Lt. Bob Hargrove

Richard Crenna: Gov. Lew Edwards

A Robert Evans production, an Adelson/Baumgarten production, released by Paramount Pictures. Director William Friedkin. Producers Robert Evans, Craig Baumgarten & Gary Adelson. Executive producer William J. MacDonald. Screenplay Joe Eszterhas. Cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak. Editor Augie Hess. Costumes Marilyn Vance. Music James Horner. Production design Alex Tavoularis. Art director Charles Breen. Set decorator Gary Fettis. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.