Pacific Heights (1990 film)
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Pacific Heights is a 1990 thriller film directed by John Schlesinger with a cast of Melanie Griffith, Matthew Modine, Michael Keaton, Mako, Nobu McCarthy and Tippi Hedren.
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[edit] Plot
The film opens up with Carter Hayes (Michael Keaton) lying in bed with a woman, only to be quickly jostled out of bed and beaten up by some hired thugs who tell him to leave town or else. The film then moves to a yuppie unmarried couple Patty Palmer (Melanie Griffith) and Drake Goodman (Matthew Modine) buying a large $750,000+ Painted Lady apartment in an exclusive San Francisco neighborhood of Pacific Heights, where they renovate it and plan to rent the two apartments on the first floor to cover most of the monthly mortgage.
The couple seems mildly interested in having their African American friend and city cop become their tenant, but his application gets lost, causing the cop to believe that they are discriminating against him because of his race. Yet, their first tenants are an Asian American couple, and things seem rosy until they meet Carter Hayes.
Hayes has all the trappings of being a good client, i.e. a friendly face, and the ability to talk as if he is part of some legit educated middle class. In reality, he is really a manipulative and deadly con man who does not pay rent, the deposit, changes the locks and quickly gets the Goodmans into all sorts of trouble through scare tactics, verbal baiting and turning his own apartment into a dark cockroach-infested den. All of this is part of Hayes elaborate scheme to use the California tenant laws and his army of cockroaches to somehow get control of the property cheap, although how this would occur is not explained, and the film's depiction of typical landlord-tenant laws and tenant rights is woefully inaccurate.
As Hayes does various antics, Goodman will quickly overreact, thus getting into trouble with the law and eventually he has an accident, while Palmer remains passive.
The stress causes Patty to have a miscarriage and Drake to be hospitalized for a misstep. After destroying their dreams and aspirations and prompting the other tenants to flee in fear, Hayes vanishes almost without a trace.
While Goodman lies in bed recovering, Patty becomes determined to have her revenge. She searches what remains of the apartment and is able to track Hays down to his new con game involving a wealthy and elderly widower. Patty poses as Hayes wife in order to get into his hotel room and charge plenty of expensive room service and wine on his credit cards and then call in to have them declared stolen so that when Hayes returns he is arrested and forced to charm his way out of jail.Hayes quickly makes it back to the apartment and a fight erupts between Patty and him, resulting in Hayes demise.
[edit] Critics
Movie critics generally panned the film for producing a dull yuppie thriller with a Freddy Kruger-like tenant, taking too many liberties with the actual law and following too many clichés of horror films, i.e. the dark basement or murder of a family pet [1]. That the film was penned by a writer with a bad experience with a tenant and came out with a message that tenants have too many rights. However, Chris Hicks of the Salt Lake City Desert News was among the critics that praised the acting, especially of Keaton, and found enjoyment in having Patty getting her revenage on a man that had manipulated the law, albeit a Hollywood version of the law, to wreck her dreams and hurt the man she loved [2].
[edit] DVD
The DVD edition of the film was released in 1999 and included a trailer for the film, but no other special features such as a director's audio commentary, deleted or extended scenes or subtitles.
[edit] External links
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