Going nowhere...slowly.

Rating: 1/10 (26 July 1999)

**** POSSIBLE SPOILERS ****
I sat down to this movie thinking I would see an extremely intelligent movie with a complex plot and well developed characters. I was wrong. This movie gets started in one direction, and then proceeds to dance around in place while nothing important happens.
I felt that I could have left the movie, walked around the lobby for an hour, returned and have missed nothing at all.
The movie opens at a party hosted by Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack). Dr. Bill Hartford (Tom Cruise) and Alice Hartford (Nicole Kidman) are introduced as a couple who in the company of others who are a bit more affluent then themselves. Apparently, Bill is friends with Victor and gets invited to these parties every year. We never learn how or why Victor and Bill are friends.
We do learn that Bill is in fact a doctor who's not a jealous man until his wife tells him that she had a fantasy once about being with another man she saw. Then Bill decides it's time to roam the streets and encounter every sexually skewed person on the planet as he tries desperately to cheat on his wife. You don't learn much else about Bill except that he did in fact go to medical school, as evidenced by the fact that he runs into an old friend from med-school who dropped out. His friend, Nick Nightengale, is not developed much either.
Alice Hartford (Nicole Kidman) plays opposite Cruise as his wife. We never learn much about her either, except that she's a flirt when she's drunk, she likes to smoke weed, and she's really upset that her husband doesn't think that she would cheat on him. Oh yeah, there is some mentioned interest in art and I think we see her looking through the want ads for a job once.
The two have a daughter in the movie who's only purpose is to prove to you that Bill and Alice have actually been married for the stated nine years without having to actually explain any of their past. In fact, we learn nothing about their relationship whatsover. Keep in mind, that their relationship is the supposed crux of this movie. The "climax" of the movie is when Bill ends up at a secret sex party where everyone is masked and cloaked. He is immeadiately recognized by a hooker who he had briefly helped the night before when she was drunk and high on heroin and cocaine. How she recognized Bill through his cloak and mask despite only have met him once in an extremely foggy (near-overdose) state is beyond me. Eventually, his true identity is exposed at the party and Bill's life may be in danger (you're not sure because you never told who's at the party and what their capable of). The hooker comes to Bill's rescue and sacrifices herself for his sake. The climax is later undone as Victor explains that the whole identity exposing, life-threatening scene may have in fact been staged just to scare him. You never learn one way or the other what the truth is.
The movie has a fitting ending as Bill ends up confessing all that has transposed to Alice and she tells him that they need to "f*ck".
This was one of the worst movies I have seen in quite a while. Even if you are curious about this movie, I urge you to save your money.