Kidman's superb acting combines with Kubrick's verbally complex screenplay to offer a many-layered analysis of contemporary gender roles.

Rating: 10/10 (27 July 1999)

Kubrick dares to use long takes, complex dialogue, and subtle motifs to give us a noir "Scenes from a Marriage" that comments not only on marital role-playing, but our culture's larger obsession with gender roles, sex, and heroism. Cruise is impotent through most if not all of the movie, and engages the audience in the titillation of seeing but not touching that characterizes American attitudes toward sex. He tries to play the hero but cannot, and only Kidman's character (and Pollack's, if we trust him) recognizes the warts on the face of the all-American boy. Risky business, indeed! Characters develop and grow deeper and more human before our eyes, amply justifying the danse macabre pace. And the film's self-referentiality to movie audience's fascination with nudity, orgiastic sex, and the star power of Kidman and Cruise adds an even richer layer to Kubrick's concoction. Not his best, but worthy of them.