Wolf

Year of release : 1994

Run time : 2h5m

Genre : Horror / Romance

Cast : Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Spader, Christopher Plummer

One late evening, Will Randall, editor in chief of a New York publishing house, runs over a big black wolf on a snowy road from Vermont. He gets out of the car, wanting to get the dead animal off the road, but it bits his hand and runs away. As he drives away, there seems to be a whole pack of these kind of wolves in the woods.

Billionaire Alden is taking over the publishing house, and at a big party at his home, he offers Will a job in Eastern Europe (instead of firing him), replacing him with his protege,whom, Alden says kept on nagging him to give him Will's job! Will's trusted co-workers tell him they'll go with him, but he forbids them to quit their jobs as they need the money.

Feeling sick, while scaring the horses, Will ends up on the property connected to the house the party is held at, and he meets Alden's daughter, Laura.

The next day, Will sleeps all day. The day after, he edits faster than the usual, without his glasses. His sense of smell is heightened, and smells his protege's scent on his wife's clothes. He can hear people from far away, and this gives him confidence to leave the firm and take all of his clients with him.

As he is working on this, at night on the full moon, he slowly changes into the creature which bit him, hunting for animals.

I personally enjoyed the movie until the end, which ruined it. The movie moves slowly, and we see him trying to keep his job, while finding out his protege is a two faced man who keeps on going behind his back,taking everything he has, I guess, wanting his life, wanting to be him.

He leaves his wife and starts seeing Laura. At the same time he is afraid of himself, of what he might be changing into.

I hated the ending, SPOILERS which tells us once turned into the animal, he remains in such a state, not to mention, he is not vindicated, quite the opposite! I've never seen such a movie, in which the lead takes the blame for what others did, and is not vindicated in any way! Things could have been so easily solved, as it was obvious the protege was the villain (he drove through Laura's property crashing her gates and running over the employees,mauling another. This could have been proven by the police. Not to mention her father's power would have solved the issue.), all Laura had to do, was leave things the way they were, stay in the same outfit, and tell the police the truth, except maybe for the wolf part!

STILL SPOILERS -Also, Laura turns out to have been bitten, I don't know when,but she's changing too, and all I could think of was, there's nothing cool in becoming an animal, and living as such! That is awful!

Apparently I'm not the only one who hated the ending, as the movie's release was delayed, as the viewers hated the ending, which had to be re-shot! The original ending was even worse than this, with Laura poisoning Will, but him not dying, as she kept him as a pet in the Arctic! Make it make sense,people!

The screenwriter left the movie as he didn't like director Mike Nichols' take on his script, as he said he wanted a Dionysian approach not an Apollonian, and I quote " he took my wolf and made it into a Chihuahua."

I liked the places where they filmed, the houses and interior design. There's a beauty in the old movies that doesn't exist in the ones of today.

The acting was good, I thought Michelle was the best, as she had to act scared, and she was great. I watched this after I watched "The bodyguard", and I remember thinking, "this is how Whitney should have acted scared!".

I hated the soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.

The visual effects were good.

The movie grossed 131 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 70 million.

It received mixed reviews, to negative, as the critics felt the movie didn't go anywhere, it was just office politics, which is correct.

Cinema Score audiences gave the movie a B.

Sharon Stone turned down the role of Laura Alden.

You can watch the full movie here,for free :

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9s02nk

Rating : Could have been a contender !