I’m sure that most of you out there have already seen “Indecent Proposal,” considering all of the hype surrounding it. But for those of you who have never seen the film, I will offer you my personal opinions on it. I remember being anxious to see this movie before it even came out, after I had seen all of the advertisements about it. The storyline was something that I had never seen handled before in a movie.
The movie follows a young married couple, David (Woody Harrelson) and Diana (Demi Moore) who are struggling to make ends meet. Along comes the classy and sophisticated multi-millionaire John Gage (Robert Redford), who tries to help them ease their money woes by offering the couple a million dollars for a night with Diana. They wrestle with the moral dilemma that this poses, but not for very long. Only a day or two later, they say yes to John’s proposition. Of course we know what will happen next. Guilt sets in after the night is over. David regrets that he let Diana go through with the deal. He becomes jealous. (After all, we ARE talking about Robert Redford
here!) In short, their decision to choose money over fidelity ends up tearing their marriage apart. To make things worse, John tries to pursue a real relationship with Diana and actually begins to win her over. We see how this destroys David internally, as he realizes that he is nowhere near as polished and cultured as John is.
He knows that he can never offer Diana the kind of high-class, upscale life that John can. So of course the big question that remains is will he somehow find a way to get his wife back in spite of this?
When I went into this movie, I wasn’t thrilled that Woody Harrelson was cast as the tortured and guilt-ridden husband. I had only seen him previously as the sweet but naive Woody Boyd on the hit comedy “Cheers,” so I was rather skeptical that he could pull this role off convincingly. But after seeing it, I was pleasantly surprised by the range of his dramatic acting talent. I thought he did very well. I especially liked his acting in the scene when he realizes at the last minute that he made a mistake ...
