Billed as "a romantic thriller in the tradition of the master of suspense" (you know who, don't you?), this is one of the few such tradition-followers that gets up from its knees and stands eye to eye and/or goes toe to toe with The Master. Part of the reason for that is the fiendishly ingenious plot -- a spinning-wheels-in-mud sort of thing, descending gradually past the tops of the hubcaps -- that holds water better and longer and in larger quantity than many, or most, of The Master's. (Eat your heart out, Brian De Palma!) But the shot-by-shot construction of the scenes, when not too derivative, is hardly less admirable, with a sure feel for the sharp edge of a scene, and the salient detail, and the telltale glance between characters. Besides all that, there is an overtly sordid side to writer-director Curtis Hanson, such that he seems to raise up on his toes and try to stretch himself above The Unnamed Master (that chucklesome torturer) or else look past him to someone like Polanski. It was the latter in whose "tradition" Hanson appeared to be toiling in his underrated and underseen first film, The Arousers, though not in the couple of juvenile potboilers in the interval. And he seems also to owe something, actually quite a lot, both here and in his screenplay for The Silent Partner, to the "tradition" of suspense novelist Patricia Highsmith -- whose slimier depths The Master himself fought shy of in his adaptation of her Strangers on a Train. That early novel set the narrative pattern for a whole host to follow: one bad decision and a parade of bad consequences, with some almost malevolent intervention by Bad Luck into the bargain. This is the pattern of The Bedroom Window as well, and it is a high compliment to say that it stays true to the pattern all the way to -- but regrettably not through -- the end. With Steve Guttenberg, Isabelle Huppert, and Elizabeth McGovern. (1987) — Duncan Shepherd