The Razor’s Edge

source: The Razor's Edge

I rented this movie strictly because Bill Murray was in it. He's always been one of my favorite comic actors. After seeing The Razor's Edge, my view of him changed forever. As much as I enjoyed his work before and after this film, his career development appears stunted. In this film, Murray is brilliant and convincing as Larry Darrow, a man searching for his soul's peace, after a brutal event "awakened" him from his posh aristocratic life. Murray is a comic genius, but his abilities as a dramatic actor have been woefully underused.

Normally I'm a self-professed arthouse snob who likes to watch slow-paced films that are truly well-written and directed, but this film purported to be a serious drama starring Bill Murray is horrible beyond belief in terms of its deadly lethargic pacing and consistently pointless dialogue scenes with the ensemble cast who tried their best to naturally perform but come off as superficial and contrived. I have not read W. Somerset Maugham's novel, nor have seen the first one that preceded the film. Frankly, 'The Razor's Edge' is a terrible, horrendous, awful 'arthouse drama' movie, if not the worst movie ever to attempt at 'being serious' of a drama expected from well-made drama movies in terms of wasted resources and labor that went to the production of the movie realistically set in the early 20th century (about the only redeeming quality of the film I could say). I have no problem accepting Bill Murray taking a serious and risky role (I have yet to see Sofia Coppola's 'Lost in Translation' at the time I submit this comment), but this was a bad career move for Bill. Same could be said for Jim Carrey who took the risk and did quite well in 'The Truman Show' but 'The Majestic' an altogether different story. Bill tried his best at usual deadpan humor expected of him as a comedic actor and he comes off too stoic, somber, subpar, pompous and desperate. I wonder what the heck were adaptation writer/director John Byrum and co-writer/actor Bill Murray smoking when they attempted to make The Razor's Edge. Is their adapted version of the novel about enlightenment? Pursuing the simplicity of life? Poking fun of the rich? Preaching compassion and kindness? Sarcastic insight on hypocrisy, vanity and drudgery? From trying to stay awake viewing the film in one-sitting, it's apparent they did not have focus on these points and instead drag the whole film with lame, tedious and awful dialogues in scene after scene concerning the supporting characters' problems in contrived and cartoonish depiction and how Bill Murray's protagonist is a saint compared to Forrest Gump and Patch Adams. Hal Ashby's 1979 film 'Being There' accomplished the points I laid out above. Peter Sellers' swan song portrayal of Chance the Gardener was the saint compared to the impostering likes of Bill Murray's Larry Darrell and Tom Hanks's Forrest Gump. Apparently, Bill, John and the film producers were trying too hard to make the best Oscar bait movie to come along in the history of the 80's cinema, with them envisioning sweeping movie award ceremonies with the 'masterpiece' they produced. 'The Razor's Edge' failed at the box office not because of the audience's dashed expectation of Bill Murray's risky acting attempt at drama and utter apathy, but simply because the film is deadlier slow-paced, slothful, pointless, frustrating, wholly incoherent, disjointed and dreadful wallowing in Oscar-winning-conscious self-importance pretending to be a top-notch quality serious drama movie. In summary, 'The Razor's Edge' is an ideal cure for insomnia. 1/2 out of **** stars

This is one of the most under-appreciated films of the last 20 years. I think people didn't know what to expect from "funny man" Bill Murry. This was the first glimpse of the dramatic actor that we now know as Bill Murry. The story is rich with connections to our own lives of what we want out of life and struggle to find. It depicts the evolution of innocents to the realities of the real world. This movie will make you think, laugh and cry. When I saw this film in 1984 I was in shock by the honesty and bluntness of the story. I was surprised by the unfavorable reviews that it received. But they had a negative result in discouraging a lot of people from seeing the film. It is a shame that such a good story and fine performances were not seen by as many people. They missed out. If you have not seen this Film. I highly recommend you take the time to view this wonderful story. If you have ever tried to read the original text and gave up as I did do to to the difficult style you will appreciate the smooth and logical story telling in the film. It will make you appreciate your life and all the you have to be thankful for.

"The Razor's Edge" is based on a novel of the same title. "The Razor's Edge" takes place over at least a decade, moving from the midwestern U.S to WWI in Europe to Paris and what might be Tibet and back to Paris again. It's a nice film to look at, as the period and place production really sucks one into the story, and has what I thought of as a cozy pacing, but what some might think drags on a little (it was a great, alone-on-a-rainy-Sunday, laying-on-the-couch rental for me). The film does a good job of playing ideas with scenes, and playing the ideas/scenes off of seemingly drastically different ones, from the barren emptiness of a battlefield to the uplifting emptiness of the Himalayas, to the warm loneliness of a Paris café, to the cold loneliness of a rich man's death bed. This is obviously a true labor of love for Bill Murray. He nails his character and the ideas the script attempts to channel through his character's development. Hopefully, now that somehow people can "accept" Bill Murray as not "just" an overtly comedic actor (with the success of "Lost in Translation") people will be more open to enjoying this very good film.

What an extreme example of miscasting. Bill Murray keeps doing his thing: a series of cynical, lazy gazes that even in comedies are no funny at all, let alone in this attempt to drama. The razor's edge is the kind of story that needs very masterful acting in order to be convincing and not look dated. It was painful to see such a dignified story transvestited into his "efforts" to look troubled and complex. It seems that even his colleagues were not taking him seriously!!! His "acting" is way below any criticism. Catherine Hicks is also a weak actress and contributes nothing to help the disaster. Exceptions are Theresa Russel as Sophie and Denholm Elliot as E. Templeton, but the final result is still unwatchable.

The supposed 'straight' role that Bill Murray performed in this adaptation of the novel by the same name is why it failed. On the back of Stripes and then Ghostbusters, people found it hard to accept the deadpan face of Murray fronting a movie examining belief systems and the meaning of life. The screenplay charts the spiritual and philosophical growth of Larry Darrell (Murray) as he begins to question the materialist world building up around him. Darrell's search within takes him across the globe through many different scenarios, and Murray adds a welcome dose of humanity and - to be quite frank humour, as he treads the path to salvation. The novel by Somerset Maugham is an excellent read, and its not that the performance of Murray detracts from, or belittles the plight of Darrell, rather it enhances it.

Those who don't get it are perhaps the most enlightened of us all: that is exactly what this amazing movie was all about. In the end Larry's search was fruitless. No book, no bottle, no friend could provide the answer because it did not exist. Life, meaning, purpose, all of these things were succinctly, artfully and convincingly tossed aside as incidental, even distracting to the true meaning of life, which is nothingness. Hopefully that's not too disarming, because the film is simply one of the best ever made (top ten? certainly.). It was an almost incalculable improvement over the 1946 version, which was truly awful. Murray did not preach, he showed by example, whereas the early version was like a post-WWII government instructional film on how to attain karma. Murray's performance was so subtle as even to be missed all together (in my opinion the best acting of all), whereas Power was begging you to see the light. Please, don't miss this film, and if you don't "get it" first time around, empty your mind of distracting clutter and see it again. See it fifty times if you have to. When the message finally does come through, you'll know it was worth it.

I saw this movie when it came out and 26 years have not dulled the memory of how terrible it is. How bad? Well "Razor's Edge" is like Bill Murray's lounge singer trying to do a serious grand opera -- and occasionally reverting to his lounge persona. What makes this movie particularly awful is its grand pretensions. Murray, at least at that point in his career, didn't have the acting chops for serious drama and was allowed to get away just about anything. It's the ultimate vanity project. Awful. Awful. Awful. It was nice to see Brian Doyle Murray, Bill Murray's brother, in a small role, since they used to work together on the National Lampoon Radio Hour.