Tunnel Vision (1995) Online

This little flick didn't receive much in the way of a critical boost on its release. I saw it at a private screening and walked away thinking, "Yeah, well I sure seen worse in my time at a theater!"

Mrs "Oasis", Patsy Kensit, plays Detective Kelly Wheatstone. There she is, sitting at her desk replaying a tape on her cassette - the only clue she has to a bizarre series of rapes and murders and abstractedly she glances across at her partner Frank Hampton...lights are on but no-one's home! Frank you see has other problems...big time! He figures his wife is having an affair with her boss David de Salvo, which is occupying rather more of his mind than either the cassette on Kelly's desk or the serial rapist!

Well you just know that de Salvo is going to wind up very dead don't you? and WHO do you think is implicated but poor old Frank. A warrant is issued for her partner's arrest but Kelly ain't no detective for nothing. Just because every available clue points to his guilt she sticks to her gut feeling. Its going to be a long night for her!

OK Movie.

Patsy Kensit and some random Australian bloke star as a duo of wannabe tough coppers in the middle of investigating a series of art-gallery related murders, but in between they can still find the time to shoot juvenile shoplifters and suspect the brand new wife of the male cop of being adulterous. The serial killer suddenly isn't important anymore when the supposed lover of the wife (who's basically just a co-worker of hers) is found murdered and the male cop becomes prime suspect. "Tunnel Vision" is a really dull, implausible and tension-free Aussie thriller that obviously imitates popular sex-thrillers like "Fatal Attraction", "Disclosure" and "Basic Instinct". The characters are extremely one-dimensional and pretty much every good-cop/bad-cop cliché is extendedly described in the script. The struggling position of police women in a corps full of men, the shoot-first-ask-questions-later mentality, alcohol problems through stress, etc etc… Even the unhealthy eating habits of cops are a running gag. Yawn! Kensit really tries her best to make this film more bearable, but she lacks the credibility and talent of a real cinema heroine. The end-twist is more or less interesting (not at all original, mind you) but, by then, you stopped caring for the characters a long time already. The scenes filmed inside the sex clubs look ludicrously fake and Clive Fleury's directing is completely uninspired. What a total waste of time…

I'm a fan of Patsy Kensit, so I watched this Aussie import. I was disappointed. Just couldn't believe any of the characters, any of the "suspense" or any of the plot. To its credit, though, I did not see the major plot turn at the end coming. But that's not enough. Compliments on the beauty of Rebecca Rigg. But overall, this film isn't worth seeing. Grade: F

I'm biased. I like Patsy Kensit on film. From her role as Mel Gibsons lover to her wild character in Absolute Beginners. Patsy has a knack for consuming the character and making the character believable. Her character as a detective in Tunnel Vision gets you in, you believe she is in grave danger from the get go. Then as the tables are turned and the villian you think is responsible for these these artistic murders turns out to be someone else. There are some great red herrings in this movie, all believable and the location for the film is wonderful & the music by academy award winner David Hirschfelder is fantastic. This is a movie well worth the ticket price.

TUNNEL VISION is a dullish Australian thriller featuring Patsy Kensit as the miscast lead. She's out of her depth here, really struggling with the accent and failing to convince most of the time too. I saw this described as a giallo but it's more like a psycho-thriller of the kind that were doing the rounds in the early 1990s. Kensit is a cop on the trail of a killer, but the pacing is slow and not much happens from beginning to end. Former Hammer horror star Shane Briant (FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL) appears playing an older cop but has very little to work with, and the mystery ends up being resolved in the most boring and predictable way imaginable.

"Tunnel Vision" starts out as a serial killer thriller with S&M references, but soon bogs down into too much family drama; the police investigation takes second chair to the male detective's marital troubles! So basically we have two parallel story lines running at once, and although the film does manage to tie them up with a decent final twist, it progresses SO slowly that for many viewers it may not be worth the wait. Patsy Kensit is sexy (she has the face of a supermodel and I love her accent) and convincing as a cop, but for someone who receives first billing, she doesn't really get to do all THAT much. The rest of the cast is functional and nothing more. (**)