Widow's Kiss Reviews

A proven cast marks time in this languid, rather depressing suspense-drama that makes use of numerous red herrings to flesh out a routine erotic-thriller on its way to late-night cable. Relations between young Sean Sager (MacKenzie Astin) and his millionaire attorney father, Justin (Bruce Davison), have been strained ever since the death of Mrs. Sager in a car wreck. The boy is hardly enchanted when his dad brings home a new paramour, glamorous widow Vivian Fairchild (Beverly D'Angelo), who arrives complete with a grown-up son of her own, the vaguely menacing Paul (Michael Woolson). Abruptly, Justin Sager drops dead, and Vivian and Paul take over the household. Sean knows the gold-digging newcomers are responsible, and to help prove murder he turns to Eddie Costello (Dennis Haysbert), a cop his father occasionally employed. Meanwhile, Vivian learns she will inherit the entire $10 million fortune only if Sean perishes. Paul--actually Vivian's lover, not her offspring--schemes to do the job during a college fraternity hazing, but Sean comes prepared and shoots the assassin dead. When Sean confronts Vivian with this news, she tries to recruit him as her latest partner in crime, revealing that poisoning Justin wasn't even her idea, but rather a hired hit commissioned by Sean's grandmother (Barbara Rush), who is vengeful over her daughter's death. Leaving Costello to arrest Vivian, Sean visits his grandmother, gets a confession out of her, then gives her a revolver with which she commits suicide as the police close in. Astin makes a callow and surly young hero, and for a moment the script implies he might have killed his father after all--the deed takes place off-screen, muddying things considerably. Numerous red herrings are dropped along the sordid story line in half-hearted fashion--from Vivian's apparent incest with Paul to her possible drug addiction--but only the grandmother's complicity comes as any surprise, and one finds precious little entertainment value in the old lady's unmasking and destruction. There's really not much point to WIDOW'S KISS, except to fill time in late-night slots on cable TV--and to keep a number of good actors with scant marquee value employed between prestige jobs. D'Angelo in particular handles her seductive, sinister role as well as one could ask, given the material. She goes back and forth between movies like this to doing Sam Shepard plays on-stage. Haysbert also brings an edge to what would otherwise be a marginal character. (Violence, adult situations, sexual situations, nudity, substance abuse, profanity)