User Reviews

"Second Skin" bets everything on a hot babe, a scenic local, a handful of decent actors, a weak story and loses. Henstridge bumps her head, loses her memory, falls for some guy, gets her memory back and remember she's supposed to kill him. The story waxes somewhat more convoluted but lacks character depth and gives us little reason to care. Camera work is artsy for artsy's sake...nice try but no cigar. Fonda is unconvincing as the ultimate heavy, etc. Overall, this flick is a stylish loser not worth the time.

This movie is not only bad, it's sad. It doesn't really deserve a review, but its silly pretentiousness calls out for some kind of response .

The dialogue is so bad it's laughable, it has cardboard characters with cardboard acting, and, to remind you that you're looking at full-bore noir, it's loaded with clichés (a slinky femme fatale, thunder and lightning, a lot of rain, dark clubs, moody music, hookers, obvious villains with faces shaded in menacing darkness throughout; the list goes on). It has characters named Tommy Gunn (a gruesomely tattooed, gum-thwacking bad guy; see Richard Widmark, 1947, Kiss of Death), Sam (as in Spade, a sort of good guy), Gutman (as in Sydney Greenstreet's character in The Maltete Falcon), and Crystal Ball.

Scriptwriter John Lau and director Darrell Roodt, in other words, seem to be having fun with 1940s-style noir films. Unfortunately, we don't get to share in the fun. It's an unintentionally hilarious flick because it plays it dead-straight from start to finish. (Sample dialogue: 'Cherchez la femme'. 'What's that?' 'It's French'. One of the most famous phrases in the French language, and the femme fatale has never heard of it. Jeez.)

As parody, this might have been at least tolerable; when played straight it's screaming for ridicule.

There's a twist at the end, and you don't see it coming, and how could you? The 'other' woman who gives it the twist appears in the film without any context, so the viewer is left befuddled by the ending more than shocked, which is what noir audiences in the 1940s used to be when they saw similar kinds of stuff.

Noir directors in the '40s-early '50s (e.g. Samuel Fuller, Henry Hathaway, Jules Dassin) made some excellent (and very cheap) films, and they did them with style, good pacing, and believable dialogue. And they didn't have the luxury of sexual situations and famous four-letter words that saturate this pile of tripe, which apparently cost something like $3.5 million (not a lot these days, but still...) to make. The leftish Dassin, for one, is shouting from somewhere in Europe, where he's been cloistered since the witch-hunts of the 1950s. You could feed a lot of hungry people with $3.5 million, I can hear him saying.

This film is laughable, and doesn't intend to be. Ultimately, that's why it's so sad.

I found the twists and turns amusing right up to the very last one. Having seen it I feel that I shall have to watch it again to see if the chronology is right. For instance when you learn the truth about each character you would think that Crystal Ball should have already met Sam Kane. Another is the hit and run car having been stolen from... was it Cleveland, I'll have to see it again and do a pause on the driver as I have the impression that it was the "other woman". That would complicate no end the logic of the story.

I found the acting good overall - though it was a little contrived to prevent the public seeing "more" of Natasha Henstridge in the "love" scenes.

The DVD was sold here, a week ago, for 2euros, so the film company obviously didn't place much value in it.

***SPOILERS*** What surprised me most about the movie "Second Skin" wasn't all the twist and turns as well as double and triple crossing of those in it. It was the fact that the movie was filmed in and around Capetwon South Africa. I could have sworn that the story took place in Southern California or at least on the sunny Florida coast.

We have in the film noir "Second Skin" the usual mystery woman calling herself Crystal Ball, Natasha Henstridge, who has, after being hit by a runaway car, trouble remembering her past. There's also the somewhat strange used book store owner Sam Kane, Angus MacFadyen, who seems not at all interested in attracting customers to his store but also, in how he has no worries at all about paying the rent, independently wealthy.

After Crystal's accident Sam gets very close to her not only hiring Crystal as his assistant, a job which at first Chrystal wanted, at the store but having this creepy looking guy Tommy G, Liam Waite, show up looking to buy children books not for any children but for himself! As things turn out Tommy G and Crystal do in fact know each other and are both working for the "Man" United Brotherhood of Tanners Union President Merv Gutman, Peter Fonda!

***SPOILERS*** As the movie slowly unfolds we realize that Sam the used book store man ain't exactly what he want's us, and Crystal, to think he is! In fact we also find that Crystal isn't exactly what she want's Sam, and us in the audience, to think who she's also! We also learn that Tommy G turns out to be not only Crystal's boyfriend but somehow working together with Sam in a elaborate pay-off scheme to Gutman whom Sam, before he became Sam, owns money too! On top of all this confusion there's former Goernment Treasury Agent Hawthorne, Norman Anstey, who's blackmailing Sam to expose his true identity, as if he didn't know that already, to Gutman and want's a cool half million dollars in order to keep his mouth shut!

The film just goes on and on with a series of confusing sub-plots and mind boggling double-crosses with Sam seeming to take on at least two other identifies, which makes it hard to follow his actions in the movie, by the time its finally over! The most confusing and odd-ball character in the film is non other then Tanner Union President Merv Gutman. This guy is so off the wall that even when he explains his reasons for wanting to do in the luckless Sam, who already paid off his debt to him, you get the strange impression that he just escaped from a local loony bin!

As for the big surprise ending the person providing the surprise was about the least surprising character in the movie! In that if you blinked or sneezed while watching "Second Skin" you could have very well have missed him, or her, in the previous less then cameo scene he was in!

I caught this movie on late-night cable a few years ago, and watched it because I like Angus McFayden. I got wrapped up in the story, and it has stuck with me ever since. McFayden does such a good job of playing a suspicious, very guarded man who lets down his defenses when he falls for a beautiful woman. You can see in his eyes how he feels, without him ever having to say a word (reminds me of Russell Crowe).The pain he feels as he tells her how much he cares about her is palpable. You can tell how hard it is for him to let himself be vulnerable. Natasha Henstridge does a surprisingly effective job as the girl. She's not the world's best actress, but she makes us believe that McFayden's character would fall in love with her. The film was obviously shot on a shoe-string budget, but McFayden's acting helps bring the film up to a higher level. All in all, pretty good for late-night viewing.