Film Review - Nine and a Half Weeks (1986)

Nine and a Half Weeks stars Mickey Rourke as John, a man who works on Wall Street and Kim Basinger as Elizabeth who works in an art gallery, the two meet at a local market and fall in love, in more ways than one.

Part of me was quite keen for this film, it looked like an exciting, sexy adults only film the type of which we very rarely get nowadays, could the film fulfil that fantasy or fail at the task?

Well this falls squarely into the latter category as it is a failure beyond any doubt for three very key reasons:

First of all, the film is boring to watch as Rourke and Basinger rarely connect as a couple on screen, I know that is the point of the film somewhat but there needed to be some common connection between the two for the film to work somewhat during its darker moments and it doesn't, Basinger comes across as the better of the two but Rourke just stands there looking handsome, smiles to the camera and mumbles his lines throughout the film, what a waste.

The second is that the sexy moments the film promises are anything but and come across as tedious instead, lacking the power and impact they should have in order for the film to work.

I have no doubt this was done to avoid the dreaded NC-17 rating in the US which pretty much means You're Smegged but you can't promise a film like this in terms of going into those sorts of intimate desires for good or for bad and then chicken out and play it safe in order to avoid a fight with the censors, you either have to go for broke or not do it at all, this middle of the road approach simply doesn't work and it severely weakens the film.

The last problem is that Rourke's character is simply horrible, I hated to watch him on screen after a while and by the time reaches the end you've just had enough of this man and the horrible way he treats Liz the more the film goes on, I have to admit I really wanted one of the other characters to say to her "Are you okay?" at times or say "You don't look okay, can I help in some way?"

Now again I know that this is the point of the film somewhat but you also need some form of humanity in this story in order for the darker moments to have more of an impact as I said earlier and without that like I said, the film falters and frankly, Rourke's character is only worth 2 1/2 Weeks at most, 9 would be pushing it.

Now what does work in this film, well it's the soundtrack and its really terrific, two songs in particular really stood out, the first was "The Best is Yet to Come" by Luba which opens the film in a much more promising way and the second was the famous Joe Cocker song "You Can Leave your Hat On" which gave me that feeling of humanity the film itself doesn't have.

And so, what could've been a exciting and dark film for adults only instead turns out to be hateful of its female lead, boring to watch and plays it safe in its darkest moments, I can't recommend this one at all and part of me wishes it were better than this, 1 out of 5.