Sharon Stone Headlined An Awful Remake Of A Beloved '80s Crime Thriller

During the back half of the 1980s, there was this glamorous, extravagantly talented actor who kept turning up in exploitation movies and pumping them full of an erotic verve they generally didn't deserve. There were any number of beautiful, desirable ladies who could provide the va-va-voom films like "King Solomon's Mines," "Above the Law," and "Action Jackson" required, but the path to stardom has always been different for women, so here was Sharon Stone blowing everyone else who shared a frame with her straight off the screen.

It took no less a cinematic genius than Paul Verhoeven to realize that Stone had supernova star power. After a test run in "Total Recall," he unleashed her on filmgoers the world over with the most stylishly sleazy studio movie ever made in "Basic Instinct." Stone's portrayal of Catherine Tramell is a femme fatale dynamo who belongs in the pantheon alongside Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson, Lana Turner's Cora Smith, and Kathleen Turner's Matty Walker. She's lethal to your health, but there are worse ways to go than getting ice-picked to death in the throes of ecstasy by an uber-glamorous crime novelist.

In the early 1990s, Stone and Julia Roberts were the two biggest female movie stars in Hollywood, which worked out well for both because they were viewed as completely different types. (I'd argue they were versatile enough talents to take on any kind of role, provided the material was up to snuff, but women didn't have the leeway for failure that men did at the time — or now, really.) Stone initially capitalized on her nuclear sex appeal, but films like "Sliver" and "The Specialist" fell far short of her Verhoeven collaborations. Fearful of diminishing returns, Stone stretched. In 1995, she played a deadly gunwoman in Sam Raimi's Western romp "The Quick and the Dead" and earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her powerhouse portrayal of Ginger McKenna in Martin Scorsese's "Casino." Though the former was a box office bomb, Stone had shed her sexbomb persona. The best, it seemed, was yet to come. 

Except, it wasn't.

Stone's 1996 was a disaster. She co-starred with Isabelle Adjani in Jeremiah Chechik's inert remake of the Henri-Georges Clouzot suspense classic "Les Diabolique," then got shredded by critics for the shameless prestige play of Bruce Beresford's "Last Dance," in which Stone played a death row inmate. Aside from a graceful supporting turn in Peter Chesholm's "The Mighty," her 1998 wasn't much better. To Stone's credit, she didn't immediately hit the "Basic Instinct 2" panic button (that Verhoeven-less sequel arrived in 2006); instead, she challenged herself by taking on a role made semi-famous by the great Gena Rowlands. And, in theory, it wasn't the worst idea.

When John Cassavetes wrote "Gloria" in the late 1970s, he intended to sell the screenplay to Columbia Pictures. Though he was still very much in demand as an actor at this stage in his career, his directorial efforts, particularly "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" and "Opening Night," were box office bombs. His critical reputation had taken such a hit that most New York City publications passed on reviewing the latter; ergo, playing ball with a major studio for a healthy paycheck seemed prudent if he wanted to continue his filmmaking career.

As a Rowlands vehicle, 1980's "Gloria" is a good and gritty New York crime flick in which the star plays a mob-connected protector of a bratty kid whose family was just massacred by hitmen. There are some notable character actor appearances from the indelible likes of Lawrence Tierney, Tom Noonan, and Sonny Landham, but it's Rowlands' movie, and she owns just about every frame — which is a relief because this is not one of Cassavetes' more passionate works.

So, there was room for improvement, or at least a viable alternative take on the material, and, despite her rough post-"Casino" stretch, there was reason to believe Stone would deliver a worthy rendition of the titular character under the direction of Sidney Lumet. Alas, there was every reason to flee the theater 10 minutes after Lumet's 1999 remake began.

Even when she was slugging it out in crud like "Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold," Stone acted like she was in the big-ticket movies these exploitation flicks were ripping off. In "Gloria," however, she seems to be trying to out-Rowlands Rowlands, which is a fool's errand, and, most crucially, plays against Stone's strengths. She could've easily been a street-smart force of nature, but her performance is, if I'm being kind, a misguided homage to a silver screen legend. As for Lumet, he's made some outright stinkers, but this might be worse than his horrendously miscast cop flick "A Stranger Among Us." It's a sloppy, sluggish movie that looks like it was a chore to make for all involved. Columbia Pictures wisely skimped on the marketing budget, which left "Gloria" to make $4.2 million against a $30 million budget.

Stone subsequently slid into a big screen slump that didn't end until 2005, when she gave a superb performance opposite Bill Murray in Jim Jarmusch's "Broken Flowers." Sadly, even over a quarter-century later, time hasn't improved her work on "Gloria."