inda Fiorentino is John Dahl’s stylish thriller about a nicotine-fueled hustler who swings lasciviously from con to con. She plays New York insurance executive Bridget Gregory who coaxes meek doctor husband Clay (Bill Pullman) into making a $700,000 drug deal. Cash in hand, she skips New York for Chicago. Stopping in a noir-perfect small town, Bridget handpicks and seduces loser Mike Swale (Peter Berg). When she finds out that Clay is on her trail she shoves sex-smitten Mike into his path without mentioning the marital ties.
Mike: “I’m trying to figure out whether you’re a total fucking bitch or not.”
Bridget: “I am a total fucking bitch.”
And then some. She’s flat-out vicious.
Plot details take a back seat to Fiorentino’s savagery. Her Bridget is amoral and irredeemable. She’d flatten “Basic Instinct’s” Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) and give “Body Heat’s” Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) a good run. Thanks to the molten Fiorentino and Dahl’s eschewing of eleventh-hour moral pangs, this is shockingly heady stuff. Equally shocking is that Fiorentino (who landed in the original “Men in Black”) never again got the chance to showcase her villainous side. Then again, she’s hardly the accommodating type.
