"I grew up with Wolfgang Petersen's films. I saw them in theaters; they were always on TV. The fabled original cut of "Das Boot" seemed to be the holy grail of VHS collectors for a long time (it seems quaint now, in the age of boutique Blu-ray boxes, to imagine much being hard to find). But the one thing I missed was...well... his purpose."
"Suddenly, I could see the whole story. He was swimming the dirty river of the American erotic cinema, the things you shut the door while watching in your bedroom. Not only did he make a grand entry in the subgenre, I'd argue that he produced the most satisfying high-budget, high-gloss erotic thriller of the era. Sure, it wants for some of Joe Eszterhas's gymnastics in the dialogue, and could have used Verhoeven's stark framing."
Petersen's early German films probe post-war male studies, with Das Boot rooted in his father's naval experience and confronting controversy and ugliness. His subsequent American films oscillate in political sensibility and tone, producing peaks and valleys across diverse genres. Shattered reframes his trajectory by placing him squarely within American erotic cinema, delivering a high-budget, high-gloss erotic thriller that prioritizes charged, heedless eroticism. The film channels Sirkian melodrama and borrows surgical fixation motifs, while showing some weaknesses in dialogue and framing compared with contemporaries, yet achieves a satisfying, visceral melodramatic rush.
Read at Roger Ebert
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