Don't Sweat

Yesterday I was watching a pretty lousy thriller called "Cold Sweat". I'm getting down to the bottom of the barrel on what Netflix calls 'steamy thrillers', so I'm resorting to less and less promising titles and lowering my bar severely in hopes of still being content. This one basically got there, although I do have a lot of problems with it. Some of those are fun problems, and some of them are more my problem than the film's, but a lot of problems are there.

The movie is a little unfocused. Every time I think I'm sure which character to say it's about, I grow uncertain. Let's just start with the hitman, who seems like the main guy for a while as the film invests in the emotional turmoil that flows from his most recent killing. He isn't guilt ridden about the guy he killed, but the girl who was having sex with him just before. The woman keeps appearing to him as a ghost, often in a state of undress. Figures that he wouldn't be tormented by killing the guy.

He contemplates getting out of the game, but takes another job from a businessman (played by Dave Thomas!) who wants his partner dead. I found it curious that he wanted his partner dead when it was his wife and some banker who both were making decisions jeopardizing the business, but he wanted his partner (played by Henry Czerny) dead. Everyone winds up getting in on the act more or less, as there are a bunch of difficult to understand double crosses.

Also hard to understand was the decision to cast the guy they got as the hitman. He's given a rich, conventional home life to balance out his murderous job, but since he shows less warmth than Timothy Dalton's James Bond, that's an odd call. Then again, Dave Thomas as a wealthy businessman willing first to contract out murders and then to commit them himself is also probably a mistake. It did provide a lot of the film's value.

Most of the film's worth, of course, came from the many sex scenes, but I confess that they began to achieve diminishing returns. Other cast members included Adam Baldwin and Shannon Tweed, the latter of whom hooks up with almost everyone, and while cutting down on the sex would have necessitated more plot and action that they clearly were not up to the task of executing, that just might have been the best thing for them to do.

I guess it was fine, as Shannon Tweed movies go. It did hold my interest, although I drifted away for a few moments and spent much of the rest of the movie trying to work out who it was that had gotten killed at one point. I never did arrive at a satisfactory conclusion on that, as first one and then the other of the two possibilities later appeared alive. I do know the identity of the guy who successfully passed about an hour and a half: me.