Touches You

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Cynthia Kellogg (Demi Moore) voluntarily comes in to give evidence about the case of James Urbanski (Bruce Willis) to police detectives John Woods (Harvey Keitel) and Linda Nealon. She describes the relationship between the brash James and his combative wife Joyce (Glenne Headly). Cynthia and Joyce are best friends working as hairdressers. The trio goes to a carnival and James ends up dead. Cynthia wants to call the cops but Joyce insists on covering it up. Cynthia tells her husband Artie (John Pankow).The main problem for me is that I don't believe Cynthia from the first moment she opens her mouth. With Bruce Willis playing James so broadly and the detectives challenging her story constantly, it adds up to an unreliable story teller. That happens a lot in good narratives if it's handled right. By the thirty minutes mark, James is already dead and I'm ready for the next version of the story. That's how this movie should have gone. The detectives can interview someone else and the characters within the story become different while adding to the story. Instead, the story keeps following Cynthia and I don't believe anything on the screen.

The hairdresser, wife and mother Cynthia Kellogg (Demi Moore) is in police department being interrogated by the experienced detective John Woods (Harvey Keitel) and his partner, Detective Linda Nealon (Billie Neal). Through flashbacks, she reveals how her best friend and colleague Joyce Urbanski (Glenne Headly) married the scum and nasty James Urbanski (Bruce Willis); how hard Joyce's life with James was; and why Joyce became a criminal. The smart detective finds some contradictions in her statement and presses Cynthia, trying to disclose the truth of two murders."Mortal Thoughts" is an intriguing and underrated low budget thriller. The storyline is simple but the tight screenplay and outstanding performances of the cast are impressive. Demi Moore performs a mother living in the dilemma between disclosing a secret and hiding the truth. Harvey Keitel in the role of an astute detective is amazing, finding the controversies in the testimony of Cynthia. Glenne Headly is also great, in the role of an abused and unsecured low class woman. Bruce Willis has a different role, performing a disgusting drug addicted. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Pensamentos Mortais" ("Mortal Thoughts")Note: On 15 May 2016, I saw this film again.

'Mortal Thoughts' believe it or not had the potential to be a decent thriller, if only the filmmakers knew what they hell direction they wanted things to go in beforehand (or if they did know, then they should've clued the rest of us in on it).Demi Moore is Cynthia, a distraught woman who comes in to testify about the death of her friend Joyce's (Glenn Headley) husband, a sick sadistic moron named James (Bruce Willis). James is an abusive husband, and it makes you wonder what the hell Joyce was thinking getting married to this guy (and him too, since he obviously didn't care about her). She saw his true personality from the start, since they argued about pure nonsense even at the wedding. He's just a no good guy. The guy you love to hate.Joyce always threatens to kill her husband, according to Cynthia. But, she never really goes through with it. Until one night at a carnival, when James's antics just get to be more than Joyce can take. Cynthia sure was wishing she didn't tag along, especially when Joyce shows her James bleeding to death in the back of the van, and hopeless Joyce admitting that she "accidentally" stabbed her husband.In one agonizingly long sequence of flashback events leading all the way up to Cynthia's decision to testify, she tells the interrogating detectives (including one Harvey Keitel) how she helped cover up the murder to protect her best friend, Joyce. But, one lie after another about what really happened seem to be a mounting problem for Cynthia more than Joyce because she seems to be the one left doing all the dirty work. What looked like helping a friend suddenly turns into a game of revenge. Suddenly, going to the cops right away after James's death doesn't look so bad now, considering the consequences Cynthia, more than Joyce, faces if she were caught. I suppose, with her confession, she hopes the police will go easy on both her and Joyce.All the while, we revert back to this interrogation, as the detectives are reviewing Cynthia's stories for loopholes, making her nervous as they point out her contradictions. And this is suppose to get our attention, not just push along the flashbacks because they never change even though her testimony may in order to accommodate the policeman's questions. But, sometimes it is just boring nitpicking rather than something that might make us consider that Cynthia's story is really just full of holes. Even Harvey Keitel doesn't make it seem interesting and neither does any of Demi Moore's forced reactions of confusion and guilt and sorrow. If the interrogation part had been much stronger, perhaps we would've been forced to take more interest in the general flashback. But the entire story is just too dull to muster that kind of support. On the other hand, the movie doesn't totally leave you hanging. The story does start to get good once Cynthia and Joyce get involved in this mess and then try one stupid thing after another to keep it quiet. But it just didn't seem like enough (and the story by itself was just too long), especially considering that the interrogation and pointing out Cynthia's contradictions are meant to make this mere drama a real thriller. It just fails to do so, and so you're left with about a half-good thriller which had the potential to be much better. And, when the final twist arrives, it just seemed like a tragic let down, rather than a real shocker. Nothing seemed to properly build up to it.

I can't say the movie was awful, just that it was awfully slow. It seemed to have been filmed in slo-mo, if you know what I mean. The acting was decent, and there was a twist at the end, but by the time I got there, I was just glad for it to be over.