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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Showtime Ent.
Salesrank: 40743
Released: December 16, 2003 |
| Our Price: $6.79 |
| Used Price: $2.57 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Behind the Red Door is a story of one woman’s journey through the forgotten past of her family’s violent history and her mother’s tragic murder. Natalie (Sedgwick) embarks on a path of self discovery as she is faced with a last chance for redemption from her troubling youth and the truth that she has hidden all her life. The opportunity presents itself when she is reunited with her long estranged brother, Roy (Sutherland) who finds himself infected with the AIDS virus. Though Natalie has come home to save her brother’s life, she soon realizes that he has saved hers.
Behind the Red Door Reviews:
Red Door 
2009-07-04 - This film was recommended to me by some members on the 24 fan site. I had never heard of it and was curious to see how Kiefer would pull off playing a gay man. His portral is priceless to say the least. "Roy" is very rich, very selfish and very sick. First contact with his astranged sister is difficult for both of them. This is a fantastic portrayal of a brother and sister who have loved and needed each other, then hated each other, then work their way back again. The commentaries on the disc are revealing and personal. I'm very glad to have spent the money on this film.
hallmark/ lifetime illness-of-the-week schlock 
2008-02-13 - Pauline Kael famously barbed that she might have been able to conjure empathethic tears for Bette Davis in DARK VICTORY if it weren't for the fact that the terminally ill Judith so nobly surrendered up such a posh-elegant life in such a posh-elegant setting. In kind, the terminally ill protagonist of BEHIND THE RED DOOR collapses in a bathroom the size of an enviably vast studio apartment--posh-elgant gold faucets and all. If ya gotta go, then die young, pretty, and rich.
The positive components of this movie are the cinematography of beautiful landscapes on diamond-sharp film stock, Kiefer Sutherland channeling his real-life father's best acting tics, and ... well, that's about it.
Stockard Channing looks young and attractive and not over-the-top brassy in the Audrey Meadows/ Eve Arden role of tough best friend, and the rest of a capable cast at times raise their paper-thin characters to two-dimensionality.
But the negatives include a self-serving screenplay, a muddled Daddy Dearest subplot that spins its wheels in redundant but non-advancing flashbacks and is not adequately resolved, and a heroine continually playing second banana to her own Medusan hairdo--the worst cocker spaniel coif since Daryl Hannah's flat curls in the drab remake of REAR WINDOW.
"No one really wants to be alone," a dying man intones somberly, though it's likely that ANYONE would prefer dying alone rather than be subjected to the nearly psychotic, solipsistic drivel this poor soul must endure in the climactic deathbed scene.
A major flaw in the script misses what might have been a moment of genuine interest. When the heroine is splashed with contaminated blood, she assures the doctor that she's safe because she has no open cuts. But in the first scene of the movie she stabs her own finger at the mere hint of her brother's existence. The self-stabbing was intended only as a a "visual" externalization, a disturbed sibling's metaphor rather than an actual aspect of a sustained character over the arc of a coherent plot. Convenient for the exposition but too complicated for the film's "third act," so we're expected to accept the sister's short-term lapse of memory: this is the kind of pretty-suffering movie where an audience's short-term memory is expected, demanded, and a blessing.
Sutherland plays "Roy," a man of limitless wealth, whose sister's principles keep her poor but pure. By movie's end, as each breath brings him closer toward death, Roy morphs from egotistical tyrant into a beatified saint spouting sputums of precious wisdom, while the script transforms Sis into self-satisfied Rod McKuen greeting card. Should we be surprised to learn that the film was produced, written, and directed by a woman whose now deceased brother's name was ... Roy?
Evidently the real-life Roy bequeathed his real-life limitless wealth to his real-life sister, enabling her to make this visually stunning but egocentricly shallow fortune cookie of a movie.
Real-life Roy's real-life sister was so real-life wealthy and nobly grieving, it appears, that she defied anyone else associated with the production to cool her jets and make the tribute to her brother she hoped but failed to achieve.
behind the red door
2007-10-18 - very good-i could relate to the movie because i was told i only had less than a year to live when i had cancer. you really do focus on what needs to be done in the moment and not what should be done in the future. very powerful message-i believe in a person's right to choose when to die.
Behind the Red Door 
2007-10-01 - everything perfectly, makes fun with amazon to buy. DVD is in a
good was entitled, everything okay. At any time again.
Benefits From the Superb Acting from Sutherland and Sedgwick 
2007-04-14 - Kiefer Sutherland's credible acting as Roy, rich, successful businessman is the reason you should see this little-known film. For his next project Roy, acid-tongued perfectionist, hires a photographer Natalie (Kyra Sedgwick), who happens to be his long estranged sister. We soon realize that Roy actually called in his sister for another reason - he knows he is sick.
"Behind the Red Door" tells the story of their reconciliation as well as their traumatic childhood in the film's black-and-white flashback sequences. Stockard Channing also appears as Natalie's agent, but the time and role allotted to her is too short and small.
Kiefer Sutherland superbly deals with the vulnerable side of cynical Roy, who must accept the inevitable facts. Kyra Sedgwick is also very good as his sister, who cannot leave her annoying brother even after displaying her animosities right in front of him. Each scene including both actors has a ring of truth, something that many people would find in their personal experiences.
However, I for one found the flashbacks about the murder of their mother unnecessary. The saddest event that must have affected the lives of the children needs more detailed descriptions, but the back story about the death of their mother remains too vague to convince us of the impact upon Roy and Natalie, whose memories, it is suggested still haunt her present life.
The dramatic power of "Behind the Red Door" comes largely from the talented stars whose effective acting makes the otherwise ordinary film's scenes very memorable.
