The 90s were a high point in the actor’s career, but he failed with this film that ended up being among the most rented when it came out in physical format
Already retired from cinema as a result of the serious illness that has afflicted him for several years, Bruce Willis will not be in front of the cameras again, but throughout the time in which his career was active he left us great roles to remember and He will always have the honor of being one of the great heroes of Hollywood for roles such as John McClane in Crystal jungle or the movie The Last Boy Scoutbut also for his participation in films that we will never forget for one reason or another such as The sixth Sense, Pulp Fiction, Twelve Monkeys or the series Moonlight.
Bruce Willis’ career reached its peak in the ’90s: after his first appearance as John McClane in Crystal jungle in 1988, which made him one of the biggest action stars of the moment around the world. Not only would that film be followed by the first sequels, but Willis would also star in other popular feature films such as The Fifth Element and Armageddon and a host of other titles in which he showed that he did not want to be pigeonholed into action films and that he could excel in any genre.
In 1994, in fact, he ended up in a film that required a different type of physical effort than filming and climbing elevator shafts: The Color of Night, an erotic thriller in which Willis, five years before The Sixth Sense, he played a psychologist in a film that couldn’t be more different from M. Night Shyamalan’s.
After a patient’s suicide, psychologist Bill Capa (Willis) is so devastated that he has to undergo therapy himself. He decides to travel to Los Angeles to visit a colleague, Bob Moore, but he is murdered after having previously received a series of death threats. Deeply shocked by the event, Bill decides to find the culprit, starting by looking for clues among the members of a group therapy organized by his friend. There he is immediately attracted to one of the patients, Rosa (Jane March), who ends up becoming his lover.
Although it is far from being one of Bruce Willis’ best films and is in fact considered one of his worst, Color of Night was the subject of a great deal of attention at the time. Mainly for the numerous sex scenes between March and Willis and especially for one of them that came to be considered one of the best intimate scenes ever seen on screen.
However, people preferred to watch it at home, in pure guilty pleasure style.
“One of the worst movies of the 90s”
With a gross of 46 million dollars against a budget of 40, the film directed by Richard Rush was a disaster at the box office and, at the critical level, things were not much better. In fact, it won the Razzie for Worst Picture that year. However, when it was released in physical format, it became one of the most successful films.
“The color of the night is probably one (and there are many) of the worst films of the nineties,” says Virginia Montes in her 0.5/5 star review for SensaCine. “The erotic thriller was popular at that time after the success in 1992 of Basic instinctso racy films starring the most sexually attractive stars of the moment began to proliferate. […] The result might have remained within the standards if it weren’t for the fact that nothing in the film works: neither the script, nor the climax, nor the actors, nor Richard Rush’s direction.
30 years later, The color of the night enjoys cult status among some fans and in 2018 a special edition was released on Blu-Ray.
