11/14/97
MOVIE REVIEW: One Night Stand
Plot turns intrigue into soap opera

By JIM SEAVOR
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

**1/2 (out of five)
Starring Wesley Snipes, Nastassja Kinski, Kyle MacLachlan, Ming-na Wen, Robert Downey Jr. A New Line Cinema release written and directed by Mike Figgis. Rated R. Running time: 106 minutes.

The idea behind One Night Stand is intriguing. A man and woman meet, spend the night together and then face the consequences.

The film that arose from that idea is about two-thirds intriguing. The rest is a cliche.

The man is Max Carlyle (Wesley Snipes), a Los Angeles director of commercials, who is happily married with two kids, a house and a dog. The woman is Karen (Nastassja Kinski), who is also married, but we don't learn to whom until much later.

They meet when Max comes to New York to see his best friend Charlie (Robert Downey Jr.), who is battling AIDS. They meet a second time a year later, when Max returns to New York to help out as Charlie is dying in a hospital.

The year between the meetings has not been a smooth one for Max. The combination of meeting Karen and dealing with Charlie has brought on what is usually referred to as a mid-life crisis. Suddenly his life of meetings, fashion shoots and very athletic sex with his wife (Ming-Na Wen) is superficial. He begins making statements such as, "Television is a frontal lobotomy."

While all this is going on, One Night Stand holds your interest. But when writer/director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) tries to tie up all the loose ends, what began so promisingly turns into soap opera.

This is not the fault of the actors.

Snipes is solid to the core as Max. We know this man. We understand him. Snipes gets us through the rocky moments in the script.

Kinski is equally strong in the much less developed role of Karen. She's basically there at the beginning to set up the situation and then disappears for the film's long midsection. She pops up again when it's time to move the plot along.

Ming-Na Wen can't be faulted as Snipes's wife. She captures perfectly living on small talk, with the suggestion there's more going on than the talk. Kyle MacLachlan does all he can with the role of Charlie's brother. (And guess who his wife is. Darn! You guessed.)

Robert Downey Jr. as Charlie has the strongest, or at least the most histrionic, role in One Night Stand. When first seen at the start of the film, he's all nerve ends. When seen again, he gets what many actors love -- a chance to die with the camera rolling.

Downey takes full advantage of the situation.

As does director/writer Figgis when he is capturing the pace of New York City at its busiest. He carefully provides a context for Max and Karen to be drawn to each other -- even though they meet way too cutely for their own good. Figgis is also good at capturing the rhythm and basic silliness of advertising, and daily life. A session discussing how to sell pickles and sauerkraut is deadly in its accuracy. So is the way he captures dinner conversations about nothing at all.

But when it comes time to get the plot moving again, One Night Stand becomes paint-by-numbers. The way Max and Karen meet again -- at the hospital -- is too much of the "Isn't it a small world?" syndrome. And how their lives are resolved is far too pat.

That's a shame, because for a while there, Figgis had something fascinating going.