Simpatico
Director: Matthew Warchus
102 minutes (15) 1999
widescreen 1.85:1
Alliance Atlantis
DVD Region 2 retail
review by Steven Hampton

A mystery drama based on a play by Sam Shepard, starring Jeff Bridges, Nick Nolte and Sharon Stone sounds like a good prospect, even if it is set on the shady side of the sport of kings. 'Simpatico' is a thoroughbred stallion used in a horseracing scam by younger, reckless versions of the characters played by the above named stars that have blackmailed a racetrack official (Albert Finney) into ignoring their scheme. Twenty years later, profound guilt and clumsy attempts at redemption surface are likely to destroy the mature lives of the criminals just as surely as the original adultery set-up wrecked the marriage and career of Finney's family man.
   There's much to enjoy here in three well-crafted performances (Finney is in fine fettle as the disgraced establishment figure of the past discovered living under an alias in the present), while Stone makes the most of a relatively minor role, but Simpatico remains a pretty bleak offering. In not shying away from examining the self-inflicted downfall of protagonists Bridges and Nolte (depicted as close friends in their youthful enthusiasm during numerous flashbacks) a sense of terrible foreboding tends to dominate the story. There's a compelling sequence of events in which the once-partners in crime virtually swap screen identities, and with cruel irony it's revealed that Finney's character doesn't much care what they did to him, yet these plot twists shed no light whatsoever on the film's inherently dark core. The message is simple: crime does not pay.
   DVD extras: scene access in 16 chapters, theatrical trailer and five-minute featurette.

DOWSE Guide to the Movies is compiled by Tony Lee editor of Pigasus Press
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