Review - The 4th Man

What a strange, strange film The 4th Man (De Vierde Man) is. You can see where Paul Verhoeven will be going with his career with it, that's for sure. It revels in sex and violence of the get-slapped-with-an-X-rating sort. I think he might've even been trying to do a Hitchcock riff here, though Hitchcock would've imploded from the sex on display. Verhoeven is obviously attracted to the idea of the icy blonde as Black Widow (Basic Instinct) and here that's the primary focus. Along with the general sluttiness of men and the trouble that gets them into.

There's all sorts of great imagery here, but there are already the trappings of Verhoeven taking his nonsense too seriously. Luckily he refrained from all the Catholic symbolism making its way into Showgirls. But as I said before, I do think he's an insane genius, despite himself. Any director who makes the one-two punch of Showgirls and Starship Troopers has my respect. No matter what the dubious merits of those films are, I can (and have) watch them over and over and enjoy them thoroughly every single time. Showgirls, though I have yet to figure out if it's on purpose or merely through wildly bad judgement, is possibly the funniest movie ever made. I can quote nearly every line of dialogue and cackle mercilessly ("You're the only one who can keep my tits a'poppin" being a fave). And Starship Troopers is just completely insane.

That said, I didn't enjoy The 4th Man nearly as much as those. He hadn't yet dropped the film school trappings and just attacked his vicious id like he'd come to do later. Hard to believe I can say that about a film that involves gay fondling of a Christ figure in a speedo and onscreen castration, but well, there it is. There's a lot of silly (yet beautifully shot) dream imagery through the film, of eyeballs in doorways (see above) and dripping blood and angelic cherubs with apple peels as halos. All terrific stuff. But, as will follow Verhoeven through his career, he just sticks this stuff onto the lousiest stories imaginable. This works with (some of) his later films, but here the seriousness he tries to attach through religious symbols and motifs just makes the triteness of his story all the more evident.

Still, it's worth seeing, at least for those with a vested interest in weirdly overblown "shocking" cinema of the 80s. That's a rarefied group, I'd imagine.