Writer/director Mike Figgis, who de-mythologized alcoholism with the downbeat drama "Leaving Las Vegas," winds up sending the wrong message in his latest film "One Night Stand," confusing sex with love and botching the whole thing with an awful cop-out ending.
Wesley Snipes stars as Max Carlyle, a successful television advertising director who has a one-night affair with a married woman, Karen (Nastassja Kinski) during a trip to New York. Back home the following night with his wife (Ming-Na Wen) and children, Max continues to be plagued by memories of the tryst.
A year later, Max returns to New York to visit his best friend, Charlie (Robert Downey Jr.), a dancer dying of AIDS. In the hospital, he meets Charlie's conservative brother Vernon (Kyle MacLachlan) and his wife, who just happens to be — you guessed it, Karen.
Face-to-face again, the two struggle to resist their mutual attraction, but are forced to confront it when they wind up together at a wake for Charlie.
Sadly, "One Night Stand" is as predictable as "Leaving Las Vegas" was challenging. And Figgis, perhaps hemmed in by his by-the-numbers plotting, has nowhere to go but to end things on a truly unconvincing note.
And frankly, the more interesting story is the one not told (like how Max's family would have reacted to finding out about the affair or how he would have tried to rectify his mistake).
Admittedly, the film does have a charismatic supporting cast (Downey, Wen and Thomas Haden Church all, well, with basically one-dimensional characters). But Snipes doesn't have nearly the range for his challenging role, and MacLachlan gives us yet another of his cardboard-cutout Yuppie portrayals.