THE RAZOR'S EDGE

year: 1984

cast: Bill Murray, Brian-Doyle Murray, Theresa Russell

rating: *1/2

Years before Bill Murray got "Lost in Translation" with an Oscar nod, thus being taken seriously as a serious actor, he was at the peak of his comedic talents in the early eighties, and he forced the studio into allowing him to star in "The Razor's Edge", the story (based on a novel by M. Somerset Maugham) about a turn-of-the-century slacker who winds up - after a stint as an ambulance driver in war overseas (ala Ernest Hemingway) - getting tired of high society and seeks wisdom in the mountains of Tibet. What you just read was a run-on sentence, and this is a run-on movie. The rich people are self-absorbed and unlikeable, and the working-class are nice and snuggly. The only decent part of the film has Bill's brother Brian-Doyle, who proves worthy of a character-actor who can act dramatically with ease, playing a rough-and-tumble sergeant during the war segment. Murray wouldn't do "Ghostbusters" unless the studio funded this for him... so at least we got to enjoy that film. This one's a dreadful bore with no enlightenment in sight.