The Rich Man's Wife

Oh how you frustrate me, Netflix star rating system! You make it so unnecessarily difficult for me to quickly give my opinion on a film.

This rant comes to you courtesy of The Rich Man's Wife. Some of you may have heard of or even seen this Halle Berry vehicle from 1996. Ms. Berry stars as a former runaway who is now married to some rich old white dude. They met when she was 17 and he proposed to her on the first date (he would have been 34 at the time). The tinkly piano claims I'm supposed to think that's romantic, but it really just skeeves me out. Both of them are cheating on each other, at least that's what we're told except Halle's the only one we actually see cheating. Hubby is a Very Busy Man who has Important Work to Do, so he's never there for his ridiculously hot young wife, but really, they still love each other.

Halle wants to make it work, so she tells her lover who is also her husband's business partner (played by a bug-eyed Clive Owen looking oddly like Colin Clive) that it's over and makes her husband take her to an isolated (is there another kind?) cabin in the woods. Did I mention that her husband is played by that guy who played Thelma's husband in Thelma & Louise? Did I also mention that he and Halle Berry have no chemistry?

They have a handful of romantical moments, but hubby's phone keeps ringing and his mind is on work. One morning Halle finds a gun in a kitchen drawer. She plays around with it, then puts it back. Later that day, hubby decides he has to go back to town or wherever, but Halle wants to stay.

That night she goes to the town's seedy 'tavern' and has a drink. She is eyeballed by some creepy looking dude (played by Peter Greene who is pictured next to "creepy looking dude" in the Urban Dictionary). She gets nervous or something and high-tails it out of there. On her way back, her Jeep stalls out in the middle of nowhere. Lucky for her, Peter Greene and his crazy eyes come along to give her a ride. He tries to get a ride of his own, but she disses him. Still he offers to come back the next day and fix her Jeep for her which he does and he manages to finagle a dinner date out of it even though Halle keeps telling him she's married.

For their date, he takes her to that seedy tavern again, the cheap bastard. We see them dancing and it is bad. The smoky room and slow mo along with the horrible music make this scene reminiscent of a Michael Bolton video. Peter Greene tries to smooth up on Halle, but she remembers that she's married and decides to leave, but he convinces her to stay. They sit down and he asks to hear all about her. She resists at first, but ends up telling him all about her runaway history, hooking up with her sugar daddy, her pre-nup that leaves her penniless in case of divorce, and her current misery. Despite the fact that the worse we've seen hubby do is go to work in the middle of their vacation, she confesses to the dude she just met, that she sometimes wants hubby dead. Peter Greene being Peter Greene then offers to do it, just as the nosy waitress makes an appearance. Halle balks claiming she luuuuurves her husband and was just venting, but nosy waitress is giving her the hairy eyeball, so Halle gets up to leave. Peter Greene offers her a ride home and nosy waitress ignores all her other customers to stay in their business.

On the ride back to the cabin, Peter Greene again tries to put the moves on Halle. When she tells him to keep his paws to himself, he decides to woo her by scaring the living shit out of her. He turns off the lights on his truck and starts speed-demoning through the woods. Halle doesn’t help matters by constantly trying to grab the steering wheel and beating on his arm. Smart money is on putting on the seatbelt and praying.

He skids into the driveway of the cabin and Halle leaps out of the truck and tries to run to the door, but Peter Greene stops her and tosses her onto a conveniently located pic-a-nic table. She fights him off, runs into the cabin, and finds that tiny little gun from earlier. When Peter Greene doesn’t back down, she wings him on the cheek (shooting out a window in the process). He threatens revenge, but takes off.

Now we’re back at their manse in the city. Hubby is home and trying to coo sweet nothings to his wife, but she is being coolly distant. Finally, they sit and talk and promise to be kinder too each other. And now it’s hubby’s 41st birthday celebration. If anything important happened during this scene (besides it being established that he’s 17 years her senior), I missed it. They have another touching scene after everyone has left. Some other day later, hubby is on his way home and we see a familiar truck start to follow him. Hubby stops at an ATM and it starts to rain. A black jogger runs behind him to get out of the rain. Hubby quickly finishes his transaction and runs back to his car. He calls Halle to tell her to dress sexy because they’re going out to dinner that night. As soon as he hangs up Peter Greene comes up from his backseat and starts choking him. He forces him to drive to a nearby park where after a bit of back-and-forth and a fight, Peter shoots him to death with that gun we saw Halle pull on Peter Greene at the cabin.

Halle is at home in the bedroom (the only room they seem to use in this big giant house) waiting in her sexy dress. She hears a noise and goes to investigate, but finds nothing. She goes back to the bedroom and is accosted by a dripping wet Peter Greene. He steals one of her hubby’s shirts while telling her all about how he just murdered him and left him poetically draped over a merry-go-round. Halle threatens to call the police, but decides against it once Peter Greene tells her he’ll convince them she hired him to do it and he knows a certain nosy waitress who might be able to back up his story. He orders her to pay him $30K within 3 days or he’ll go to the cops? I don’t know. Outside of killing her and still not getting paid, he’s really got nothing to hold over her unless he wants to go to prison himself. The cops are now ringing Halle’s door. Peter Greene tells her to stop her bawling and get out there and play the grieving wife and they’ll work on their arrangement later.

Halle is now at the cop shop. Two detectives take her in for questioning. Last time she talked to hubby, did he have any enemies, know anyone who’d benefit from his death…no, no, no. She’s let go. The two detectives discuss whether she might have done it. Black Cop inexplicably wonders if White Cop only thinks that because she’s a black chick married to a white guy. White Cop and I explain that, duh, the spouse is ALWAYS the first suspect in a murder. Another cop brings in some info and hands it to White Cop. He tells Black Cop that they have a new suspect, a “yo” who was seen behind hubby at the ATM. Black Cop apparently knows that “yo” means black man, so he rolls his eyes. I might have heard that on NYPD Blue once, but have no idea what it means.

Clive the Lover comes over to Halle’s. He has to fight his way through reporters to get through the gate which appears to be guarded from the inside by two police officers. He finds Halle moping on the dock. She tells him he shouldn’t be there and in the same breath blabs to him about the whole Peter Greene-killed-hubby thing. She then tells him they shouldn’t be seen together which is kind of stupid consider that he just walked through a dozen reporters and a couple of cops to get to her. Clive leaves.

Meanwhile, the ex Mrs. Clive shows up to implicate her Clive in hubby’s murder. She has found saucy pictures of Halle in her ex’s glove box. She tells the cops that Clive is broke and wants hubby’s money and his wife. The cops are intrigued and in trouble because remember that “yo”? Turns out he’s some prominent member of society and a friend of the mayor’s. D’oh! (Although I take a bit of offense at the notion that it’s perfectly okay to accuse your average Joe black man of being a murderer.)

Halle goes to see an attorney or somebody and he informs her that all the dough is frozen. Because hubby didn’t have a will and she signed that crazy pre-nup the estate has to go through probate which means she is basically broke. She pouts. Meanwhile, Clive heads into his place and heads for the phone. Peter Greene scares me and Clive by asking him who he’s gonna call. Clive is only mildly surprised to see Peter Greene because hey, guess what? They’re in this whole thing together. Clive apparently hired Peter Greene because he wants to marry Halle and get all her husbands money, maybe not in that order though. Peter Greene threatens to cut Clive out of the deal or rat him out to Halle or the cops or something menacing. It doesn’t matter because the point of this scene is simply to establish that these two are in cahoots.

Now the police are surveilling hubby’s funeral. They watch the ex Mrs. Clive saunter up to Clive. Mrs. Clive basically tells her ex that she gave his dirty pictures to the cops and that he’s going down and that’s exactly what he gets for not paying her alimony. She leaves and Clive heads over to pay his respects, but stalls when he spots Peter Greene nonchalantly having a heater and observing the services. The cops notice Clives balk and train their binoculars on Peter Greene wondering who this new player is. Clive decides to check for those nekkid pics which aren’t there. He decides to bail and forget throwing dirt on the coffin. Peter Greene though, decides this is a great time to have a conversation with Halle. He’s all grabbing her and making a bit of a scene, although we only see it from the cops’ POV. Naturally, they are really interested in finding out who this guy is.

The cops do a little research and find out who Peter Greene is and his criminal history. They’re starting to think he might maybe have been the killer of hubby and Halle might maybe have put him up to it.

Peter Greene contacts Halle again. She tells him she can’t get the money, but he makes more threatening noises, so she gives him the “fine I’ll get your dough let’s meet”. Being all broke and terrified, Halle goes to pawn some of her jewelry and goes to her meet with Pete packing a little heat. She goes into one of those watery dark tunnels that you only see in movies where he’s standing in the middle having a smoke. She gets too close to him and pokes the gun in his face and makes threats. He disarms her, grabs the money, and is about to assault her when some random folks head down the tunnel. Halle screams for help, but Peter Greene shoots at the guys and they flee. She manages to fight him off and run out of there. She ends up on some kind of interstate highway nearly getting run over. Life would have been so much simpler had she just jumped in her damn car.

If memory serves me, she runs straight to Clive. She now wants to go to the police, but Clive is reluctant. Halle is determined because she is afraid Peter Greene is going to kill her. Clive assures her that Peter Greene would not hurt her and he uses his name in the process. Halle catches her snap and runs out of there. She heads back to her house (instead of to the police) and naturally is accosted by Peter Greene. The two battle all over the place in the dark, but she manages to escape and hide. Clive shows up and gets shot but good by Peter Greene. Instead of staying put in her good hiding spot, Halle makes her way to the kitchen, loudly rumbles through drawers trying to find keys, and heads to the garage to a vehicle. She has to go back inside once because she has the wrong keys. She grabs the right ones, but Peter Greene spots her through the skylight and comes crashing through. They fight and we hear sirens approaching. She manages to wrestle the gun away and shoot Peter Greene just as the cops raise the garage door. I watched this a few days ago, so I don’t really remember how the cops were alerted (they might have been on their way to arrest her or somebody might have called…I’m guessing the latter since about a dozen cop cars respond to the scene). Halle gets arrested.

Now I will warn you that there is a “twist” coming soon that I am going to reveal. Halle is being questioned (I should have mentioned that we actually started out at this part and the movie is really all one big flashback even though Halle is telling the cops stuff that she couldn’t possibly know because she wasn’t there, for example the little scene at the funeral). She is telling the cops the whole story, but they don’t believe her. Unfortunately, they don’t have enough evidence to hold her because both Clive and Peter Greene are dead…or something.

The cops decide to check with the ex Mrs. Clive to see if she might know more. She claims she doesn’t know Halle that well, but that Halle isn’t the plan-a-murder type nor is she clever enough to pull it off. The ex Mrs. Clive tells them the whole plot was likely Clive’s idea to win Halle and her hubby’s money and he was killed when he tried to screw over Peter Greene and Halle actually had to kill Peter Greene in self-defense. And that’s kind of what the movie has told us pretty much. For some reason, the cops buy it, even though all evidence points to Halle being behind the whole thing and most juries would hear her story and see the three dead men in her life and lock her ass up. Anyway, they release her. She steps out of the station looking all lost and confused and like she has no idea where to go. She heads to the parked car and hops in. The camera pans over and obviously it’s the ex Mrs. Clive. The two smile and laugh because they have planned the perfect crime…or something. Except isn’t Halle’s money still in probate and wouldn’t the two of them not want to be seen together, especially IN THE PARKING LOT OF THE FRICKIN’ POLICE STATION? The suggestion is of course that these two manipulate this whole thing, except too many things have to happen in a particular manner in order for this to be true. I know I’m supposed to suspend disbelief, but they could have at least tried to fill some of the plot holes. For example, for their little plot to work out juuuuuust right, Halle had to know that Peter Greene would show up at the funeral and that Clive would spot him at the funeral and wig out and that the cops would see all this and make all sorts of connections.

And then there is the flashback aspect of the movie. You know why I forgot to mention it earler? Because the movie totes forgot all about that angle until the end. We don’t get a single voice-over or flash forward to remind us that we are watching events that have already happened. Then again, they probably realized that doing such would hip us to the fact that Halle was recounting events she would have know way of knowing about.

Anyway, this is a bad movie, but since I laughed most of the time, I can’t say it was awful. That's where my Netflix dilelmma began. I didn't really "like" this movie, but I didn't "not like" it either. Two stars (not like) seems mean, but three stars seems generous. Wish I had a 1/2 star option. Enough. So, I’d would say if a person was flipping channels looking for something to watch on a Sunday afternoon and came across this movie on that weird station that is like Fox but isn’t, said-person could give it a watch if they can’t find an Ice Road Truckers marathon or something else on.