Dangerous Indiscretion is what happens when someone mistakes a grocery store flirtation for the beginning of a high-stakes erotic thriller, and then builds an entire movie around that single, terrible idea. It’s like they dared themselves to write a script during a hangover, and then never bothered to proofread it before filming.
C. Thomas Howell plays a bland ad executive whose charisma died somewhere in the frozen foods aisle. He bumps into a mysterious married woman—Wendy Abbott, who acts like she’s auditioning for a soap opera but forgot which one. Their chemistry is about as explosive as two damp napkins rubbing together, but the movie wants you to believe it’s an instant, all-consuming passion. One second they’re reaching for the same cantaloupe, the next they’re tangled in satin sheets, gasping like they just ran a marathon on broken glass.
Enter the husband. Oh boy. He’s rich. He’s angry. He’s the kind of man who stares at old Scotch and probably calls his wife “woman” unironically. And when he finds out his wife is sneaking around with Discount Don Draper, he launches into revenge mode. Not “hire a hitman” revenge, but the more boring, legal-document-waving kind of revenge. You can tell he’s unhinged because he wears expensive robes, speaks softly, and occasionally breaks things no one cares about—like vases, or the audience’s patience.
The pacing drags like a wounded animal across shag carpeting. The first act is all stolen glances and jazz saxophones. The second is endless paranoia and increasingly absurd decisions—like Howell’s character thinking it’s a good idea to keep seeing the woman even after receiving threatening letters, creepy voicemails, and one too many “accidental” encounters with her husband in parking garages. By the third act, you’re not rooting for anyone. You’re rooting for the credits to roll.
The sex scenes? Oh, they’re here. Slow, steamy, and as necessary to the plot as a lava lamp at a funeral. Each one is lit like a Victoria’s Secret catalog from 1992, complete with soft focus and emotionally vacant writhing. And the dialogue—dear god, the dialogue:
“This can’t be happening.”
“It already is.”
Yes. And so is tooth decay, but at least that’s got more bite.
The cinematography does its best to inject some style, but when your script is a thinly veiled Skinemax rerun, no amount of moody lighting can save it. The score, meanwhile, sounds like it was stolen from a rejected Red Shoe Diaries episode—heavy on sax, light on subtlety.
And the title—Dangerous Indiscretion—is just vague enough to promise something spicy, but the film delivers all the danger of leaving your window open during a light drizzle. It’s not dangerous. It’s not even mildly thrilling. It’s a beige affair with beige people doing dumb things in a beige world.
Final Verdict:
Dangerous Indiscretion is the cinematic equivalent of buying expired wine and trying to pretend it’s still got flavor. What could have been a tense, erotic thriller ends up a limp soap opera with a lobotomized sense of danger and a libido that flickers like a dying light bulb. Howell looks lost, the script is recycled paper trash, and the plot moves like a sloth in lingerie.
1 out of 5 stars.
One star for the guts it took to film this and not immediately bury it in the produce section where it belongs.
