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American Gigolo is all slick surfaces and neon glossed artificiality. Midway through there’s a murder-mystery thrown in, I don’t really know why, and frankly I don’t care. I think this film is all pretty on the outside, with nothing much going on beneath the surfaces. Of course, what else should one expect from producer Jerry Bruckheimer but a series of glossy images masquerading at something else?
It’s a shame that the film feels so limp, it emerges out the gate as something sexy and interesting, here is a lonely man who provides thrills for a rich female clientele. Richard Gere preens and pouts marvelously in the role. He’s incredibly handsome here, and he gives a great movie star performance, yet Paul Schrader’s script never truly gives him the opportunity to dig deep. Gere mostly just stands around in various states of (un)dress in Armani or drives down the PCH to Blondie’s classic song “Call Me.” Strange to think that this material feels so incomplete in Schrader’s hands, the man wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.
It seems like the perfect subject matter for Schrader to explore, yet the execution isn’t what one would hope for. The ambivalence with which his character is explored doesn’t create much of a vested interest in the outcome of the murder-mystery. Neither does the romance with the married politician’s wife (Lauren Hutton). These two elements feel half-baked, and take up most of the running time as the film progresses. Why would a woman with everything to lose throw it all away for Gere’s gigolo? That question never gets a satisfactory explanation or reasoning is given, this has a lot to do with Hutton not being entirely up to the task of convincingly portraying this woman. But man, American Gigolo has plenty of style to burn through.
