MovieChat Forums > Femme Fatale (2002) Discussion > I liked it better the first time I saw i...

I liked it better the first time I saw it, 16 years ago...

posted 21 years ago by 123-15
5 replies | jump to latest

...but then it was called "Wisdom". Let's take a look at some of the similarities (major spoilers). Main character has had a brush with crime. Right before a turning point in the main characters life they fall asleep in a tub. They then dream of a life of crime that ends in their own death. Said main character then wakes up in tub and is able to change their future for the better. The small details are different between the two films but the broad plot is the same. What was Brian De Palma thinking in stealing the story? And if he was going to steal a story, why steal one from Emilio Estevez? You think he could have done better. Ok, I'd admit that "Wisdom" wasn't that great a film so De Palma must have been banking on no one remembering it. It's sad really, there is nothing original left in Hollywood.

[–] mafiahitman 21 years ago

Yeah, and I'm sure someone thought of high-quality video discs before DVDs. You know, laser discs? But who uses laser discs now? Wisdom was crap. Don't be mad because (insert insane creepy reason here).

[–] gaiderdraco 20 years ago

How can anybody as powerful and influential a director as Brian De Palma steal a movie or idea from anyone else? I don't think you actually have seen any De Palma films until now, right?

Besides, Wisdom was s_hit and Femme Fatale is a good movie.

[–] 20 years ago

[deleted]

[–] jgb6288 20 years ago

SEMI-AGREE! There are still tons of original movies out there, It's just that all the good directors (Quentin, Rodriguez, Spike) are running dry. Inspiration is a one or two time thing, Resevoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were a few of the best movies ever made, then Foxy Brown and Kill Bill were complete S_hite, regurgatations that were slapped as "innovative" simply because of the Director. There are still very original movies out there, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (even though taken from a book) is an amazing movie, as with Punch-Drunk Love, Adaptation (COMPLETELY original), The Boondock Saints, and even Igby Goes Down. Most "good" movies now-adays are tributes or based on books. A shortage of good writers, creative vision, and ideas are to blame. The political climate of America is putting a chokehold on Hollywood, that's why foreign films are so hot right now, the Japanese, French, and South American Film industry is booming out aaaamazing movies (so are American Indepents). give it a few months (or if worse comes to worst: 4 years and a few months),

[–] BARTNGEN 20 years ago

It's sad? Do you know what Hollywood or moviedom really is? Interpretations, homages, expansion. So many ideas take off where others were left and are made original in execution, not in conception. Quentin Tarantino, Richard Kelley, Robert Rodriguez, Steven Soderbergh-- oh yeah, it's soooo sad. De Palma's beauty trash head is always at it's best and most twisted when filtering and splashing every conversation, movie, idea it seems he's ever had onto the screen of our see through movie-going skin. He takes cliches and amps them up to the point that they become almost new again. And as for Wisdom, which had a seed of an idea and overwatered it, you should be glad someone may have seen the good in it and turned it's posturing seriousness into a nasty, fun film.