Classic Movie Review: 'Sliver'

Sliver (1993)

Directed by Phillip Noyce

Written by Joe Esterhas

Starring Sharon Stone, Billy Baldwin, Tom Berenger

Release Date May 21st, 1993

Published June 8th, 2023

Why is the movie Sliver called Sliver? I believe it's the name of the building where the movie is set but that is such a tossed off mention that I am genuinely uncertain. I can extrapolate that it is a loose metaphor for the films central relationship between Sharon Stone and Billy Baldwin. By that I mean, he is someone who can painfully get under her skin, like a sliver. Get it? That's not explicit in the text of Sliver, but it's the best that I have been able to come up with. I spent a lot of time thinking about the title, Sliver, while watching the movie Sliver, because thinking about the title was more entertaining.

Sliver is a softcore thriller with the pretense of being a high minded drama. Director Phillip Noyce and writer Joe Esterhas seem to think they have something to say about voyeurism and sexuality but it is clear where their prurient interests truly lie. They want to watch very attractive people have sex and they've made a movie to cover for their fetish. This was not an uncommon thing among male filmmakers at the time. In fact, movies covering for a filmmakers sexual fetish could be its very own sub-genre of 1990s cinema. Not kink shaming, just observing.

Sliver stars Sharon Stone as Carly Norris, a rich book editor living in New York City. She jumps at the chance to move into a new apartment despite the apartment having a haunting past. A woman, who looks a lot like Carly, may or may not have been murdered in this very apartment by having been thrown off of the balcony. Oh well, look at all that natural light. New York real estate, am I right. If New Yorkers rejected every apartment where a murder occurred, there'd be few places to live.

Carly moves in and it is zero minutes before creeps are breathing down her neck. First up is a famous author of 'erotic' thrillers, Jack Landsford (Tom Berenger). He's a former cop who uses his cases as inspiration for his creepy fantasies. So, he's a fan insert for Noyce and Esterhas. Perhaps its a case of Berenger being the stand in for who they really are, sweaty, kinky wannabe studs, while the other love interest, Billy Baldwin, is the fantasy of who the writer and director wish they were, a handsome and smooth talking ladies man who's still a major creep at heart.

The central portion of Sliver is devoted to figuring out who killed that woman who lived in Carly's apartment. But that doesn't actually matter in the end. There are two major crimes happening and no one in Sliver is free from being implicated, aside from the beautiful, innocent, naive character played by Sharon Stone. You can see the flaws inherent in that right? Sharon Stone's talent is not necessarily playing either innocent or naive. That's no shade to Stone, she's just way too elegant and intelligent for the movie and character she's trapped within.

The murder is just a red herring, a hook to draw you toward what is far more interesting and fetishistic for the writer and director, voyeurism. Billy Baldwin's creep character, Zeke Hawkins, is a secret billionaire who owns the building in which he, Carly and Berenger's creep writer lives. Zeke has installed cameras everywhere in the building, every apartment, every room, especially in the bathrooms. He spends his days sitting in his command center penthouse watching everyone all the time.

The day that Carly moves into the building, Zeke watches her in the shower, masturbating. You can sense that this is why the filmmakers wanted to make this movie. This scene, and later sex scenes between Baldwin and Stone, covered in sweat with him dominating her. There is nothing wrong with sex on screen, that's not the issue. It's the pretense that Sliver has anything else going for it beyond a prurient interest in how Stone and Baldwin look while naked.

The lack of care given to make this plot make sense or actually say anything about the fetishistic voyeurism that the filmmakers treat with a striking moral ambivalence reveals what this movie is really about, ogling sexy naked people. And that's fine, nothing wrong with that. Just don't pretend that you're making a sexy thriller. Go make pornography. Stop trying to fool audiences into thinking you're making a movie and not just filming things that you can later pleasure yourself to. Esterhas and Noyce are pretending to make a movie when they're really just looking for something to get off on.

Sliver was the unfortunate subject of a new episode of my new podcast, a spinoff of the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast, Everyone's a Critic 1993. Each week, myself and my co-hosts, teenager M.J and Gen-Xer Amy, watch a movie from 1993 in chronological release order. It's a fun way to look at how much movies and culture have shifted in just the past three decades. For instance, filmmakers simply filming their fetishes and calling it a movie has fallen out of fashion in the last 30 years, if you can imagine that. You can find Everyone's a Critic 1993 on the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast feed, wherever you listen to podcasts.

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