The Rich Man's Wife
Encyclopedia
The Rich Man's Wife is a 1996 American thriller film written and directed by Amy Holden Jones. The title character becomes a suspect when her husband is murdered and the investigating detectives are suspicious of her alibi.
of workaholic
Hollywood producer Tony Potenza, but their marriage is crumbling due to his increased drinking resulting from stress at work. She convinces him to join her for a romantic getaway at a secluded lakeside cabin, but when it becomes obvious his concerns about the studio are going to take precedence over relaxation, she grudgingly tells him to return home but decides to stay on her own for a few days.
Josie sees Cole Wilson ogling her at a local bar and, uncomfortable with the unwanted attention, she leaves. Her jeep breaks down on a dark, secluded country road, and as she starts to hike to the cabin, Cole pulls up in his truck and offers her a lift. He convinces her he is harmless, and when he extends an invitation to dinner the following night, Josie accepts.
As they linger over drinks after dinner, Josie discusses her unhappy marriage. Although there are problems, and she sometimes fantasizes about her husband's death, she is grateful to Tony for all he has given her and still has hopes for their future. Cole becomes aggressive and she resists his advances. During the drive back to the cabin, he turns off his headlights and begins to drive erratically, and Josie becomes hysterical. When he tries to force himself on her, Josie fires a gun she found in a kitchen drawer and grazes his face with the bullet. Vowing revenge, Cole leaves.
With the passing of time, Tony stops drinking and he and Josie successfully work at repairing their damaged marriage. On the way home one rainy night, he stops at an ATM, and Cole conceals himself in the back seat of his car. He forces him to drive to a secluded park and shoots him numerous times, then goes to Josie's home and reveals he has killed her husband. He warns her if she reports him to the police he will tell them she hired him to murder Tony, and demands $30,000 for his silence. When the police question Josie she says nothing about Cole's involvement, but her story - or lack of one - makes detective Dan Fredricks suspicious, and his African American
partner Ron Lewis accuses him of suspecting Josie simply because she is black and her husband was white.
Josie tells her lover, struggling restaurateur
Jake Golden, she knows the identity of Tony's killer, but he warns her not to reveal anything. He has an ulterior motive - Jake, desperate for money to finance his failing business when his partner - Tony - bailed out, had hired Cole to kill Tony so Josie would be free to marry him and he could benefit from her wealth. Complications arise when attorney Bill Adolphe tells Josie all her husband's assets were in his name and he died intestate
. All his accounts have been frozen and Josie will have to wait an undetermined amount of time for the court to supervise probate
.
While Jake's ex-wife Nora tries to convince the police he may have killed Tony, Josie becomes the target of the increasingly deranged Cole. After killing Jake, he traps her in her garage and Josie kills him in the ensuing skirmish. Josie pleads self defense, and when Nora tells them she doesn't believe Josie is clever enough to have masterminded any of the events that have transpired, the police let her go, unaware the two women are partners in crime.
of the Chicago Sun-Times
observed, "I wish we could simply dispense with a review and handle things this way: You go see the movie, and then we'll sit down and have a long and very detailed talk. And you will try to explain to me how the last scene in the movie, the one that is supposed to provide the key, fits in with what has gone before. Because I don't think it does. Or can. Or should . . . The movie proceeds more or less satisfactorily for 94 minutes, and then in the last 60 seconds expects us to revise everything we thought we knew, or guessed, or figured out - just because of an arbitrary ending. That went against my grain. It wasn't playing fair . . . This plot is not blindingly original; its elements are familiar from many other crime stories. But it does become intriguing because the writing is good and the characters are original . . . What I was not prepared for was the twist at the end, which doesn't seem to follow from anything that went before, and makes all of my speculation irrelevant. Am I holding the ending against the entire movie? Yes, I suppose I am. The Rich Man's Wife is not a great movie, but it's competent and effective enough, and I might have been tempted to give it a recommendation if I hadn't felt so cheated at the end. Somehow a movie like this establishes a contract with us, an unspoken agreement that some things cannot be doubted even though others are up for grabs. When a few of the sure things turn out to be tricks, that's part of the fun. But when everything is smoke and mirrors, I walk out wondering, where is Keyser Soze
when we really need him?"
Lawrence van Gelder of the New York Times said, "The film owes no little debt to Alfred Hitchcock
's thriller Strangers on a Train
and to all those movies in which homicidal maniacs pop up unexpectedly, lone women hear creaking doors and ominous footsteps, thunderstorms erupt at convenient moments and couples who share disturbing confidences speed along dark, deserted roads while windshield wipers sweep across close-ups of their tense faces. Rich Man's Wife also owes a debt to its audience, whose credibility is sorely taxed at turning points where sensible individuals would disagree with Josie's actions."
Calling the film "a passable genre piece with weird plot twists and mediocre acting from the gorgeous Berry," Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle
compared it to "the old Lana Turner
melodrama
s with the glossy sets, soft-focus photography and operatic emotional range." He continued, "Jones serves this slice of ham with slick direction and Haskell Wexler's handsome photography, and keeps twisting the plot and our presumptions right up to the final scene. It's diverting, good-looking trash, and it might be more defensible if Berry were genuinely talented and didn't have such a thin, high-school-cheerleader voice."
Barbara Shulgasser of the San Francisco Examiner felt the only reason to see the film "is to watch a charming actress called Clea Lewis . . . play a wronged ex-wife and steal the show in two short scenes. The rest of the movie is so cluttered with old plot twists and a lame attempt at what the filmmakers must have thought would be a surprise ending that the dialogue was drowned out half the time by audience members pleading with characters not to do the same dumb things we've all seen movie characters do hundreds of times before in equally bad movies . . . Writer-director Amy Holden Jones has written other ridiculous scripts before, including the one for Indecent Proposal
, but she directed the laudable Jamie Lee Curtis
vehicle Love Letters, so there really is no excuse for the sheer ineptitude of this movie."
Godfrey Cheshire of Variety
said, "Thrills have seldom seemed as routine as they do in The Rich Man's Wife, a lady-and-the-psycho yarn so generic it might have been constructed by computer printout . . . Although her script is the source of the film's hackneyed feel, Jones' direction is generally top-drawer. Beyond her work with the supporting cast, she provides a polished, fluid look and proves especially effective at mounting punchy, visceral action scenes."
Plot
Josie Potenza is the trophy wifeTrophy wife
Trophy wife is an expression used to describe a wife, usually young and attractive, who is regarded as a status symbol for the husband, who is often older and affluent.-History:The term's etymological origins are disputed...
of workaholic
Workaholic
A workaholic is a person who is addicted to work.The term generally implies that the person enjoys their work; it can also imply that they simply feel compelled to do it...
Hollywood producer Tony Potenza, but their marriage is crumbling due to his increased drinking resulting from stress at work. She convinces him to join her for a romantic getaway at a secluded lakeside cabin, but when it becomes obvious his concerns about the studio are going to take precedence over relaxation, she grudgingly tells him to return home but decides to stay on her own for a few days.
Josie sees Cole Wilson ogling her at a local bar and, uncomfortable with the unwanted attention, she leaves. Her jeep breaks down on a dark, secluded country road, and as she starts to hike to the cabin, Cole pulls up in his truck and offers her a lift. He convinces her he is harmless, and when he extends an invitation to dinner the following night, Josie accepts.
As they linger over drinks after dinner, Josie discusses her unhappy marriage. Although there are problems, and she sometimes fantasizes about her husband's death, she is grateful to Tony for all he has given her and still has hopes for their future. Cole becomes aggressive and she resists his advances. During the drive back to the cabin, he turns off his headlights and begins to drive erratically, and Josie becomes hysterical. When he tries to force himself on her, Josie fires a gun she found in a kitchen drawer and grazes his face with the bullet. Vowing revenge, Cole leaves.
With the passing of time, Tony stops drinking and he and Josie successfully work at repairing their damaged marriage. On the way home one rainy night, he stops at an ATM, and Cole conceals himself in the back seat of his car. He forces him to drive to a secluded park and shoots him numerous times, then goes to Josie's home and reveals he has killed her husband. He warns her if she reports him to the police he will tell them she hired him to murder Tony, and demands $30,000 for his silence. When the police question Josie she says nothing about Cole's involvement, but her story - or lack of one - makes detective Dan Fredricks suspicious, and his African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
partner Ron Lewis accuses him of suspecting Josie simply because she is black and her husband was white.
Josie tells her lover, struggling restaurateur
Restaurant
A restaurant is an establishment which prepares and serves food and drink to customers in return for money. Meals are generally served and eaten on premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services...
Jake Golden, she knows the identity of Tony's killer, but he warns her not to reveal anything. He has an ulterior motive - Jake, desperate for money to finance his failing business when his partner - Tony - bailed out, had hired Cole to kill Tony so Josie would be free to marry him and he could benefit from her wealth. Complications arise when attorney Bill Adolphe tells Josie all her husband's assets were in his name and he died intestate
Intestacy
Intestacy is the condition of the estate of a person who dies owning property greater than the sum of their enforceable debts and funeral expenses without having made a valid will or other binding declaration; alternatively where such a will or declaration has been made, but only applies to part of...
. All his accounts have been frozen and Josie will have to wait an undetermined amount of time for the court to supervise probate
Probate
Probate is the legal process of administering the estate of a deceased person by resolving all claims and distributing the deceased person's property under the valid will. A probate court decides the validity of a testator's will...
.
While Jake's ex-wife Nora tries to convince the police he may have killed Tony, Josie becomes the target of the increasingly deranged Cole. After killing Jake, he traps her in her garage and Josie kills him in the ensuing skirmish. Josie pleads self defense, and when Nora tells them she doesn't believe Josie is clever enough to have masterminded any of the events that have transpired, the police let her go, unaware the two women are partners in crime.
Cast
- Halle BerryHalle BerryHalle Berry is an American actress and a former fashion model. Berry received an Emmy, Golden Globe, SAG, and an NAACP Image Award for Introducing Dorothy Dandridge and won an Academy Award for Best Actress and was nominated for a BAFTA Award in 2001 for her performance in Monster's Ball, becoming...
as Josie Potenza - Peter GreenePeter GreenePeter Greene is an American character actor.A native of Montclair, New Jersey, Greene did not pursue a career in acting until his mid 20s...
as Cole Wilson - Clive OwenClive OwenClive Owen is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991...
as Jake Golden - Christopher McDonaldChristopher McDonaldChristopher McDonald is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore, Tappy Tibbons in Requiem for a Dream, and Mel Allen in the HBO film 61*.-Personal life:...
as Tony Potenza - Frankie FaisonFrankie FaisonFrankie Russel Faison , often credited as Frankie R. Faison, is an American actor.-Personal life:Faison was born in Newport News, Virginia, the son of Carmena and Edgar Faison. He studied drama at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois, where he joined Theta Chi Fraternity...
as Detective Ron Lewis - Charles HallahanCharles HallahanCharles John Hallahan was an American film, television and stage actor best known for his performances in Going in Style, The Thing, and Dante's Peak.-Life and career:...
as Detective Dan Fredricks - Clea LewisClea LewisClea Lewis is an American actress, best known for her television role as Ellen's annoying friend Audrey Penney in Ellen DeGeneres' sitcom Ellen.- Other notable roles :...
as Nora Golden - Allan RichAllan RichAllan Rich, is an American character actor, author, and activist.-Personal life:Allan Rich was one of the many alleged communist sympathizers blacklisted in the 1950s Hollywood blacklist.-Activism:...
as Bill Adolphe
Critical reception
Roger EbertRoger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
of the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
observed, "I wish we could simply dispense with a review and handle things this way: You go see the movie, and then we'll sit down and have a long and very detailed talk. And you will try to explain to me how the last scene in the movie, the one that is supposed to provide the key, fits in with what has gone before. Because I don't think it does. Or can. Or should . . . The movie proceeds more or less satisfactorily for 94 minutes, and then in the last 60 seconds expects us to revise everything we thought we knew, or guessed, or figured out - just because of an arbitrary ending. That went against my grain. It wasn't playing fair . . . This plot is not blindingly original; its elements are familiar from many other crime stories. But it does become intriguing because the writing is good and the characters are original . . . What I was not prepared for was the twist at the end, which doesn't seem to follow from anything that went before, and makes all of my speculation irrelevant. Am I holding the ending against the entire movie? Yes, I suppose I am. The Rich Man's Wife is not a great movie, but it's competent and effective enough, and I might have been tempted to give it a recommendation if I hadn't felt so cheated at the end. Somehow a movie like this establishes a contract with us, an unspoken agreement that some things cannot be doubted even though others are up for grabs. When a few of the sure things turn out to be tricks, that's part of the fun. But when everything is smoke and mirrors, I walk out wondering, where is Keyser Soze
Keyser Söze
Keyser Söze is a fictional character in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer. According to Roger "Verbal" Kint, Söze is a crimelord whose ruthlessness and influence have acquired a legendary, even mythical, status among police and criminals...
when we really need him?"
Lawrence van Gelder of the New York Times said, "The film owes no little debt to Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's thriller Strangers on a Train
Strangers on a Train (film)
Strangers on a Train is an American psychological thriller film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and based on the 1950 novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith. It was shot in the autumn of 1950 and released by Warner Bros. on June 30, 1951. The film stars Farley Granger, Ruth Roman,...
and to all those movies in which homicidal maniacs pop up unexpectedly, lone women hear creaking doors and ominous footsteps, thunderstorms erupt at convenient moments and couples who share disturbing confidences speed along dark, deserted roads while windshield wipers sweep across close-ups of their tense faces. Rich Man's Wife also owes a debt to its audience, whose credibility is sorely taxed at turning points where sensible individuals would disagree with Josie's actions."
Calling the film "a passable genre piece with weird plot twists and mediocre acting from the gorgeous Berry," Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
compared it to "the old Lana Turner
Lana Turner
Lana Turner was an American actress.Discovered and signed to a film contract by MGM at the age of sixteen, Turner first attracted attention in They Won't Forget . She played featured roles, often as the ingenue, in such films as Love Finds Andy Hardy...
melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
s with the glossy sets, soft-focus photography and operatic emotional range." He continued, "Jones serves this slice of ham with slick direction and Haskell Wexler's handsome photography, and keeps twisting the plot and our presumptions right up to the final scene. It's diverting, good-looking trash, and it might be more defensible if Berry were genuinely talented and didn't have such a thin, high-school-cheerleader voice."
Barbara Shulgasser of the San Francisco Examiner felt the only reason to see the film "is to watch a charming actress called Clea Lewis . . . play a wronged ex-wife and steal the show in two short scenes. The rest of the movie is so cluttered with old plot twists and a lame attempt at what the filmmakers must have thought would be a surprise ending that the dialogue was drowned out half the time by audience members pleading with characters not to do the same dumb things we've all seen movie characters do hundreds of times before in equally bad movies . . . Writer-director Amy Holden Jones has written other ridiculous scripts before, including the one for Indecent Proposal
Indecent Proposal
Indecent Proposal is a 1993 drama film, based on the novel of the same name by Jack Engelhard. It was directed by Adrian Lyne and stars Robert Redford, Demi Moore, and Woody Harrelson.-Plot:...
, but she directed the laudable Jamie Lee Curtis
Jamie Lee Curtis
Jamie Lee Curtis is an American actress and author. Although she was initially known as a "scream queen" because of her starring roles in several horror films early in her career, such as Halloween, The Fog, Prom Night and Terror Train, Curtis has since compiled a body of work that spans many...
vehicle Love Letters, so there really is no excuse for the sheer ineptitude of this movie."
Godfrey Cheshire of Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
said, "Thrills have seldom seemed as routine as they do in The Rich Man's Wife, a lady-and-the-psycho yarn so generic it might have been constructed by computer printout . . . Although her script is the source of the film's hackneyed feel, Jones' direction is generally top-drawer. Beyond her work with the supporting cast, she provides a polished, fluid look and proves especially effective at mounting punchy, visceral action scenes."