3/5 Suspenseful yet Unbelievable!
  by Anony Mous (Los Angeles)
This courtroom drama was very well acted by Glend Close and Jeff Bridges,and well directed by Richard Marquand. Though very well plotted by Eszterhas, the ending was completely unbelievable.

SPOILER: The suspect, who was actually the murderer, wrote letters on a typewriter that had a defective t key--the t was slightly higher than all the other letters and stood out clearly. He kept the typewriter in his house. A police search would have uncovered the typewriter, and the typewriter would have been linked to the murderer's letters. Dumb. No murderer with Bridge's intelligence would have written those letters on his own machine--he would have known that it could have been linked to him. Instead, he would have used one from the public library or from a display model in a store that sells typewriters. Then no one would have been able to trace the letters to him.

Nonetheless, up until the above blunder, the story is very suspenseful and absorbing and is worth watching. It is much better than "Eye for an Eye" which has a similar theme and makes a similar unbelievable ending mistake.

4/5 If I wanted to see a competent thriller with a professional and polished cast, then why did I choose a Joe Eszterhas flick?
  by C. CRADDOCK (Bakersfield)
Joe Eszterhas had throat cancer so he got religion. He had to learn to speak like a robot through a reconstructed larnyx. It almost seems as if he has repented of his evil ways -- and good for him -- but he hasn't written a hit movie since. A case could be made that his best movies are pure evil, so trashy and manipulative that you can't believe the audacity of the man. Showgirls and Basic Instinct come to mind. So bad they're good? Could be.

Sliver and Jade, however, are so bad they are just bad. As for An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, it may have been his revenge on Hollywood. At any rate, if you are going to leave Hollywood, it is better to go out in a blaze of glory. Haven't seen An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, but I am nevertheless intrigued because Alan Smithee is the name that studios use when the director refuses to even let them use his name -- when a project is THAT bad. Given the Eszterhas track record, who better to bring that story to the silver screen?

Joe E. claims he will make a comeback, that he can write a hit movie without having to compromise his religious principles. Maybe he can do something for Mel Gibson?

In his heyday, he operated on the principle that Hollywood is driven by greed, and that they would pay a lot of money for a good script, no matter how trashy and hackneyed, and no matter what a jerk the writer was; IF they thought it would make them a lot of MONEY. Here is a man who demanded AND received millions of dollars for ideas he scribbled on napkins over lunch. Sometimes the gamble paid off, and sometimes it went down in flames.

Jagged Edge is actually a pretty good film, with great performances by Glenn Close, Jeff Bridges, Peter Coyote, and Robert Loggia, as Sam Ransom, the hard boiled private dick with a potty mouth that just won't quit.

Glenn Close plays former Assistant District Attroney Teddy Barnes. She has worked with Krasny (Peter Coyote), the D.A. before. She used to work for the prosecution, but now she plays defense. She knows that Krasny doesn't play fair, and she feels guilty that they have convicted innocents in their zeal for Mean Justice.

Glenn comes close to perhaps her best performance (the one she did in Fatal Attraction), and Jeff bridges the gap between a cold blooded killer, and a charming guy falsely accused of a crime he didn't commit. You are never sure which it is, and I wouldn't spoil it for ya.

Peter Coyote as the D.A., an over zealous prosecutor who will stop at nothing to get a conviction, really rang true for me. The ends justify the means, but then you end up with Mean Justice* (*good title for a book, hint, hint, hint).

What you have in Jagged Ed ge is a competent thriller with a very professional cast. They all put in very polished performances -- which is why the movie is such a big disappointment. If I wanted to see a competent thriller with a professional and polished cast, then why did I choose a Joe Eszterhas flick?


The Big Lebowski - 10th Anniversary Edition (1998) .... Jeff Bridges was Jeffrey Lebowski - The Dude
Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1997) (written by Joe Eszterhas)
Jade (1995) (written by Joe Eszterhas)
Showgirls (1995) (written by Joe Eszterhas)
Sliver (Unrated Edition) (1993) (screenplay by Joe Eszterhas)
Basic Instinct (1992) (written by Joe Eszterhas)
Bitter Moon (1992) .... Peter Coyote was Oscar
Dangerous Liaisons (1988) .... Glenn Close was Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil
Fatal Attraction (1987) .... Glenn Close was Alex Forrest
Flashdance (1983) (screenplay by Joe Eszterhas)

Teddy Barnes: Did your mother ever wash your mouth out with soap and water?
Sam Ransom: Yeah, but it didn't do any ****ing good.


3/5 "Foolish Pleasure"
  by Strawgold (Wyoming)
Glenn Close plays a brilliant lawyer who screws up - twice - once as a prosecutor and once as a defense attorney - by being too good at what she does.

She has a struggle with her conscience before taking the case presented to her, since she has decided trial law doesn't agree with her, but is persuaded by what she perceives as the facts of the case. She consults an old friend, who has also a been detective before he retreated too far into his cups; she has worked with him before and trusts his instincts. Nonetheless, after bouncing the details off him, she decides to trust her own this time and go with it anyway. Besides, Jeff Bridges is devastatingly good looking and has a stable full of horses to boot - so even though combining business with pleasure is rarely a good idea, she decides to go for it.

It was a good enough movie but I felt neither of them lived up to what I had seen them do before in their roles. But hey, the scripts for "Fatal Attraction" don't come along every day.

2/5 2 stars out of 4
  by One-Line Film Reviews (Easton, MD)
The Bottom Line:

A stupid, predictable "thriller" which will fascinate people who have never seen a movie before, Jagged Edge not only represents 100 minutes of your life that you'll never get back but it also shot Joe Ezterhas to stardom: may God have mercy on its soul.

5/5 Before Eszterhas's films degenerated into laughable rubbish
  by Genevieve Hayes (Australia)
Lawyer Teddy Barnes (Glenn Close) falls in love with her client (Jeff Bridges), who may or may not have brutally murdered his wife.

Given that "The Jagged Edge" is written by Joe Eszterhas, who also wrote the laughably bad "Jade" and "Showgirls", I had low expectations for "The Jagged Edge" and was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be one of the best mysteries/thrillers I've seen in a long time. Sure, Eszterhas's dialogue is clunky and unintentionally funny in parts, and Glenn Close's acting back in 1985 wasn't quite up to the same standard that it is in 2008 (I kept finding myself unfavourably comparing Teddy Barnes to Close's "Damages" character, Patty Hewes), but this film genuinely had me guessing the identity of the killer, right up to his unmasking in the final minute of the film. Many critics seem to disparage this film, labelling it trashy and lacking in credibility, and maybe they're right, but while I was watching this film, I was too interested in what was going on on the screen to stop and think about the possible plot holes.