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List Price: $9.98 | | Label: 20th Century Fox
Salesrank: 35156
Released: April 16, 2002 |
| Our Price: $4.20 |
| Used Price: $1.17 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Still waters run deadly in this gripping suspense thriller starring the "magnificent" (The New York Times) Tilda Swinton and E.R.'s Goran Visnjic. Immersed in the tradition of Hitchcock's best twists and turns, The Deep End "holds its suspense to the very last drop" (The Toronto Star) as it plumbs the depths to which even the most outwardly decent people will sink in the name of love.
Description of The Deep End:
Vintage film noir gets a confidently stylish upgrade in this subtle domestic thriller, intensified by Tilda Swinton's acclaimed performance as a mother who risks everything to protect her family. Adapted from Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's story The Blank Wall (previously filmed as 1949's The Reckless Moment), the film's gripping plot commences with Margaret (Swinton), a naval officer's wife and mother of three, disposing of the body of a sleazy club owner, who died in an accident after a confrontation with Margaret's closeted gay son. Maternal instinct shifts into high gear when a blackmailer (Goran Visnjic) demands $50,000 to withhold incriminating evidence, and his unspoken feelings provoke an unexpectedly compassionate alliance. Compelling plot twists aside, The Deep End gains much of its impact from the quiet desperation of a family defined by its secrets and rescued by the mysterious motivations of the human heart. --Jeff Shannon
The Deep End Reviews:
Not especially credible 
2008-12-20 - The dead bodies just continue to pile up here, but the cops never seem to catch on. No fingerpints? You'll have to suspend your disbelief to get through this silly genre exercise that revives a short story from the 1940s. It's an updated film noirish tale about a mom's desperate efforts to cover up what she mistakenly thinks is her gay 17-year-old son's involvement in a murder. Some suspense, but it's mostly kind of a laugh. Tilda Swinton is interesting, as usual.
Taut little early masterpiece 
2008-04-22 - A mother raising her family mostly on her own while her husband is at sea for long spells, in an upper-middle class cottage on the shores of Lake Taho. Her self-absorbed son has been exploring his sexuality with a smarmy older man, and Mom intervenes in desperation. The smarm has a few too many and comes looking for his young paramour at the family home, with disastrous consequences that plunge Mom into even more desperate waters. Then things take a turn for the worse. This film isn't going to be on your "top 100 of all time" list, but it is a savvy effort with exceptional performances from the leads, great direction and craftful filming, top-notch editing, and decent script-writing. It has the feel of early Hitchcock with better film, and you'll find yourself returning to it every once in a while to refresh your memory of the fine performances by Vilnik and Swinton at their best. The score is haunting, and the scenery is too, despite the natural beauty of it all. The movie has a polish that belies its low-budget making, and despite the occasionally contrived events as Mom faces her dilemna, the movie is most satisfying. If you enjoy watching "The 39 Steps" every once in a while, you'll not be going off the deep end when you buy this - it's not an action-packed comicbook extravaganza, but a darned good flick for a quiet evening.
The Deep End 
2007-07-25 - In this vivid nail-biter, a remake of Max Ophuls's "The Reckless Moment," the underused, underrated Swinton gives a flawless performance as a woman who must carry on with the mundane details of her life while bearing a life-threatening burden alone. Visnjic excels as the conflicted middle-man, but Barry is most memorable as an impatient, cold-blooded gangster. Even with momentary graphic sex and some violence, the film's dramatic tension derives from Swinton's character, and our appreciation of one mother's lonely, desperate predicament. Taut and suspenseful, "The Deep End" is not to be missed.
Great movie!
2007-06-24 - This is a very interesting and suspenseful movie. You will be so interested in the unique characters and intense plot. Great acting, great movie. I highly recommend it.
A Fine Romance
2006-08-16 - This movie tends to be like the musical score that opens it and weaves through it - simultaneously haunting and irritating.
Deep End is essentially a two-character play, an intimate dance between a protective mother and her blackmailer. The haunting element is the unexpected, rare fondness that develops unspoken between these two. Their relationship is reminiscent of the saving tenderness and respect that grows between the characters played by Audrey Hepburn and Richard Crenna in Wait Until Dark.
We feel this blackmailer's inclination to be better than his deeds early on, when he is left briefly alone in his victim's house. We can see him being touched by the order and goodness of the home Margaret has made for her absentee husband and her son. It makes me ache to realize how seldom such quiet appreciation happens in real life. I can hardly imagine a door-to-door salesman being diverted from his strictly commercial manipulations by anything he sees in a house. How much less likely it is that a blackmailer would pause to be charmed by his victim. But then, that's the poetic license we go to movies to find.
The irritating part of the movie could be the result of a bad editing job. Parts of the movie seem to be missing. For the first quarter of the film, I was distracted by wondering who the older man living in the household was. I may have missed the explanation that he was a grandfather. However, I don't think the puzzling gaps in the relationship between the blackmailer and Margaret were due to my having missed anything. At one point, Margaret refers to the blackmailer's gambling debts. How did she know he even had a penchant for gambling? In the only meetings they presumably have, they are not shown exchanging much personal information at all. The viewer gets the feeling that some crucial scenes definitely got left on the cutting room floor.
This is too bad, because the main value of this movie lies in its delicate quality of blossoming in the shade. We would like to understand more of what lay at the root of the blackmailer's absorption with the person who started out to be only a job to him. Tilda Swinton, the actress who plays the role of mother, seems too spare and monochromatic to inspire such a reversal, without our seeing more of an interaction between the two.
However, the haunting, touching aspects of the film very much outweigh its lapses.
I hope we will get to see Goran Visnjic in more big-screen roles. He makes an indelible impression as a man whose shining impulses can't find expression in such a dull, opaque world.
