Synopsis
Her first suspect is her only hope for survival.
The murder of the ex-wife of Doctor Sam Charney (Rutger Hauer) leads Detective Della Wilder (Pam Grier) to uncover a series of women's murders somehow linked to a big pharmaceutical company.
Directed by Rodney Gibbons
The murder of the ex-wife of Doctor Sam Charney (Rutger Hauer) leads Detective Della Wilder (Pam Grier) to uncover a series of women's murders somehow linked to a big pharmaceutical company.
Slow Burn, Wilder: Profession détective, Bad Boys Hunting, Cómplices, Tihi bes, Serial Killer, Бешеная
For your consideration, available for free on Amazon Prime with ad breaks:
Pam Grier is a tough Chicago detective and single mom.
Rutger Hauer is an OB-GYN and, for a while, the prime suspect in her murder investigation.
Cut to: Pam and Rutger hiding a corpse in an ice cream freezer, sharing a smooch afterward and arguing about whether that was their first date.
...what more do you really need to know?
Bizarre alien-like cinema. This wasn't real. Edited by a psychotic illness. Pam Grier and Rutger Hauer make a cute couple. Failed feminist TV pilot?
Needs a jazzed up blu-ray by a boutique label.
I recently watched Wilder (2000) on Tubi. The story follows a string of murders that lead Detective Wilder to a doctor who becomes her prime suspect. She arrests and interrogates him, but instead of answering directly, he drops hints that suggest her investigation is only scratching the surface—and that a much larger conspiracy may be at play. Now, Wilder must determine whether the doctor is revealing the truth or just cleverly covering his tracks.
Directed by Rodney Gibbons (Silent Night), the film stars Pam Grier (Coffy), Rutger Hauer (Hobo with a Shotgun), Romano Orzari (Kin), and John Dunn-Hill (300).
This is one of those films you watch for the cast—and quickly regret it. The production quality and writing feel like…
Pam Grier is so good in this, unfortunately it has the approximate tone and visual texture of a CBS procedural from around the same time, albeit with some dirty words, sex, violence, and most appealingly of all a nice anti-corporate/patriarchal edge, like it's being transmitted from some parallel timeline where tough cops who don't play by the rules stand up for women and the victims of corporate greed. It's not very good though, even though Rutger Hauer is in it too. No rating because I wasn't really paying close attention to the second half, but Pam does clock the bad guy with a metal pipe, always a welcome development. I should have watched The Big Doll House instead.
fantastic start to FEBRUTGER HAUERARY! (first ever!!)
this movie has our guy rutger looking like an androgynous grandparent, and pam grier looking hot, and a plot so convoluted even letterboxd gave up trying to figure it out.
i gathered that there was a murderer, and also a medication that was turning people's pussies radioactive (in a bad way). and the letterboxd summary is "...series of women’s murders somehow linked to a big pharmaceutical company." and the keyword there is somehow.
no one knows. no one will ever know. but this movie rocks. everyone involved just did whatever the hell they want, i think. and that rocks.
fantastic start to FEBRUTGER HAUERARY! (first ever!!)
Ii wish this was better. Pam Grier is a funky detective who doesn't believe that Rutger Hauer is the murderer of a bunch of people whom Hauer knows and sets out to prove that Hauer didn't do it. This plays like a tv pilot that didn't get picked up but Grier is good. The movie/tv episode is meh (didn't care about the plot at all) but I would've totally watched a cop show with Grier in the lead role. Somehow this ends with Grier and Hauer together as a potential couple in the making (she takes him home for dinner and her two kids are there and going "Are you gonna be our mom's boyfriend now?" and Hauer's like "maybe i don't know") The two of them may seem like an odd pairing but they're not bad together when they're throwing banter at one another.
Pam Grier AND Rutger Hauer?! how can I say no...
Unfortunately neither of them can save this film from itself and it's chaotic editing. Jump cuts galore and freeze frames timed with music that makes me extremely suspicious that this was originally going to be a pilot for a one season and then cancelled buddy cop show. Special mention to the domestic violence scene where the jump cutting becomes so erratic it shuts and opens the door in the background between each cut.
I can't HATE this though, mostly thanks to how jovial old grandpa Rutger is in it and how he genuinely seems to just be having a good time hanging out with Grier. Honestly they have great chemistry…
The presence of Pam Grier, and the sheer batshittery of the tonal swings in the plot, elevate this to "entertaining crap," but that's also its ceiling.
Hauer is mostly wasted as a murder suspect who just hits on Grier all the time. It feels like an uncomfortable age gap, despite Grier only being five years younger, because the then fifty-one year old Grier looks like a woman of about thirty-eight, and the then fifty-one year old Hauer looks like a purse of about sixty-eight.
The movie is kind of unintentionally funny in that it knows feminism exists and is something it's supposed to like, but doesn't really seem to quite know what it is beyond "tough lady good, spousal abusers…
Pam and Rutger are truly one of the oddest pairings but okay! I liked the part where Pam hits that dude with a pipe. I watched this on regular old bunny ears TV and that was exactly the right medium.
1 star is for Pam Grier, 1 star is for Rutger Hauer and .5 stars is for whoever got them together in a film. Everything else about this is horrible. Good intentions and a handful of reasonable ideas are lost under TV Movie production value, shockingly bad direction and editing and a confused and convoluted narrative.
Hilariously bad title credits, editing, and musical interludes that give off Law & Order: SVU vibes, if SVU was a softcore porn.
Pam Grier is fine in this. She puts on the sass a little bit too hard here and there but has nice chemistry with the rest of the cast. Pam's really the only reason I checked this out, because she's not the lead in very many films. It's no Jackie Brown, that’s for sure.
I thought the corporation-experiments-on-women plot was nifty but the filmmakers did a very poor job bringing it to life.