Los Angeles commercial director Wesley Snipes goes to New York to visit dying childhood friend Robert Downey, Jr. (who is in the latter stages of AIDS) and has a quick affair with yuppie Nastassja Kinski. Their secret seems safe until one year later Snipes returns to New York with his erotic, but oft-times mean-spirited wife (Ming Na-Wen) and they meet Kinski by chance when they find out that she is actually married to Downey Jr.'s older brother (a cold and seemingly unfeeling Kyle MacLachlan, even equipped with latex gloves because of his fear of catching AIDS). Would-be potboiler is actually pretty tame in the end with Snipes and Na-Wen providing a few light sparks with a couple of emotional sparring matches, but probably the greatest conflict actually occurs between Snipes and his boss (Thomas Haden Church who in the end is really only a window-dressing character here). Kinski and MacLachlan are more quiet and supposedly deep-thinking than anything else and in the end it is Downey, Jr. Who is the revelation being almost unrecognizable as a young man whose body and mind are beginning to decay from his horrid illness. However, it is almost like he is in the wrong film as his part just basically is used as a bridge on more than one occasion between Snipes and Kinski. Writer/director Mike Figgis (who was fresh off "Leaving Las Vegas" in 1995) tends to use coincidence, chance, and splintered relationships between major roles to get his points across. The film stutters and drags to its finale, finally resolving with a would-be jaw-dropping conclusion which in actuality most could probably see a mile away. Just lacks the fire and intensity needed to be much more than a curiosity and little else. 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Review of One Night Stand
