Exit in Red Reviews

Bad movies may not be what they used to be, but EXIT IN RED deserves dishonorable mention as one of the loopiest soft-core enterprises of the 1990s. The film's ridiculous plot line unfolds by cutting back and forth from the story's climax to the scenes leading up to it. LA psychotherapist Ed Altman (Mickey Rourke) tries to sidestep sexual harassment charges stemming from his compulsive womanizing by relocating his practice to Palm Springs. He resists the charms of his lawyer, Kate (Carre Otis), who gets the charges dropped, but falls for the wiles of devious Ally (Annabel Schofield). Ally and her lover Nick Stark (Anthony Michael Hall) are setting Ed up to take the fall when they murder her rich husband Noah. Nick pretends to be Noah to reinforce Ally's stories of Noah as an abusive sadist. After a frantic phone call from Ally, Ed rushes out to her mansion and discovers a bloody corpse; he helps her escape and establish an alibi. On the basis of clues fabricated by Ally, Ed is arrested for murder. When Ed sees a photo of the real Noah, he realizes he's been tricked. A truck accidentally crashes into the police station, enabling Ed to escape. Kate helps him track down Nick, whom he kidnaps, forces to wear heavy winter clothing, and then stashes in his car trunk. Ed then finds Ally and forces her to accompany him on the lam through the desert. Not knowing Nick is in the trunk, Ally tells Ed how she had planned to double-cross him too. Nick shoots his way out of the trunk and seizes control. At a roadblock, Nick is shot to death by cops, but not before he murders Ally. Ed survives, none the wiser about women. Laced with profanity and half-baked existentialism, EXIT IN RED self-destructs on the shoals of strenuous eroticism and overweening weirdness. Why does Ed force Nick to don multiple layers of heavy clothing until he resembles an Eskimo skipping out on his igloo rent? What city would build a police headquarters with a plate-glass front? Who does Mickey Rourke's hair, and what can they possibly be thinking? There are no answers to questions like these. This is the kind of film in which a bimbo stops her convertible in the wilderness and stands on the top of her auto so she can writhe in the moonlight. Annabel Schofield, splendid in MIDNIGHT BLUE (1997), purrs suggestively but registers blankly; Carre Otis recites her lines phonetically; Anthony Michael Hall huffs and puffs like the love child of Gary Busey and Susan Tyrrell. Worst of all, Rourke seems stoned on his own ego; his minimalist performance suggests that conserving acting energy is a form of ballsiness. (Graphic violence, extreme profanity, sexual situations, substance abuse.)