Someone to Watch Over Me

Someone to Watch Over Me follows dimwitted detective Mike Keegan (Tom Berenger) as he’s tasked with protecting the sole witness (Mimi Rogers’ Claire Gregory) to a brutal murder, with the movie, for the most part, subsequently detailing the inevitable relationship that begins to form between Berenger and Rogers’ respective characters. It’s a familiar, hackneyed premise that’s employed to continually (and distressingly) lackluster effect by director Ridley Scott, as the filmmaker has infused the proceedings with an excessively deliberate feel that, perhaps inevitably, amplifies the various deficiencies within Howard Franklin’s by-the-numbers screenplay. Berenger’s laughably ill-advised performance – ie the actor’s efforts at portraying Keegan as a blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth type fall hopelessly flat, with the character instead coming off as a blundering idiot – is merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of Someone to Watch Over Me‘s misbegotten attributes, and there’s simply never a point at which one is able to work up even the slightest bit of interest in the one-dimensional characters’ ongoing exploits. (This is especially true of Keegan’s deteriorating relationship with his increasingly suspicious wife, with the stretch detailing the pair’s temporary split certainly standing as an obvious low point in the film.) It is, as a result, not surprising to note that the thriller-specific elements within the narrative fall hopelessly flat, which ultimately cements Someone to Watch Over Me‘s place as an aggressively pointless and utterly forgettable misfire from filmmaker Scott.

*1/2 out of ****