Fun ‘Fatale’ a well-crafted tale
Fatale Rated: R for violence, sexual content and language. Running time: 102 munites. In theaters and streaming. 6
6⏩⁄ out of 4 2
This has probably happened somewhere, at some time, in the history of the world. Someone cheats on their spouse — and discovers true love. The married couple gets divorced. The ex-spouses go their separate ways and, following a period of adjustment, everyone is reasonably happy.
You may know of such a situation. You may have even experienced something like this yourself. But you will almost never see that in an American movie. If a man meets another woman, especially if he meets her in a bar — then forget it. She probably boils rabbits (“Fatal Attraction”), or she’s a Dutch assassin (“Munich”), or a smoldering, stone-cold psycho, as
played by Hilary Swank in “Fatale.”
“Fatale” is a fun movie, not necessarily a good movie, but one that involves some real craftsmanship in terms of story. Chances are that if you
guess, after 20 minutes, where the scenario is going, you will be wrong. You’ll be right in figuring out that Swank is bad news here, but the ways in which she’s bad are unexpected. “Fatale” is an exercise in holding an audience entirely through insane turns of story, and in that way, it works.
There are novels like this, where you can’t put them down because you can’t wait to see what happens. And then when it’s over, you think, “Why did I read that?” “Fatale” is the movie equivalent — trash, for sure, but the kind of trash that gives trash a good name.
At the center of the hellish whirlpool, as the unfortunate fellow who makes one mistake and then pays and pays and pays, is Michael Ealy as a successful businessman, living in an amazing house in the mountains, with a gorgeous wife who, for reasons we don’t quite understand, seems to hate his guts. He doesn’t understand it, either.
It’s at this point, when the marriage is struggling, that our hero happens to go to a bachelor party in Las Vegas. There he meets Valerie (Swank), who says that she has a stressful job and likes to go to Vegas to blow off steam. She has a ready smile, but a little like the wolf in “Little Red Ridinghood.” They go to bed, him thinking that what happens in Vegas will stay in Vegas, but the audience knows better: What happens in Vegas is about to follow him home and crush, demolish and pulverize every aspect of his existence.
How this happens is best left for you to discover, because in this case, the story is almost everything.
Michael Ealy’s role here is strange. He is the person we care about, the focus of audience concern. Yet the man he plays is such a victim of circumstance that it’s not particularly flattering. Aside from vaguely deciding to have sex with this mystery woman — and even then, it doesn’t ever quite feel like he decided anything — he is helpless, hapless and reactive from beginning to end.
The main event here is Swank, who was a plaintive and sentimental figure in her earliest movies and has only fully come into her strength in youthful middle age. This strength makes “Fatale” an entertaining diversion and holds out the promise for something deeper and more satisfying in the future.