Right from the opening credits and the full-blown saxophone score accompanying them, you know what you're in for: a typical erotic thriller of the early 1990's - the most prolific period of the genre. It does stand a little above the crowd because of the ambiguous "villain" - is he indeed a villain or is he really just exposing and satisfying the hidden desires of these (admittedly gullible) women for mutual gain? And the fact that the film was directed by a woman and co-written by another adds an extra layer: are Lizzie Borden and Laurie Frank trying to tell us something about their own secret fantasies? Despite all that, "Love Crimes" never raises the temperature high enough, probably because of the two leads: Patrick Bergin is miscast as a smooth charmer (especially after just coming off "Sleeping With The Enemy" where he played Julia Roberts' abusive husband),and Sean Young is wooden - which actually fits her character at the start. The problem is that she stays wooden even later when she shouldn't be (she is also a little too skinny for my tastes in this one). ** out of 4.

I can kind of and kind of not understand the hate for this film.

It's set in Savannah (and take it from someone who's been everywhere) which is one of the most beautiful cities on earth... and it doesn't really feature Savannah.

And it's content is kind of rapey BDSM before 50 Shades of Grey and before the new SJW crap that would make a movie like this impossible to be made... or even talked about.

So I can understand the hate.

But it does dramatic tension pretty well. And it does thrilled pretty well. And it does tension pretty well... ad when you sit down and watch a movie like this those are all very important things. Without them, you just have erotica...

... and I can understand the hate because it doesn't really do erotica well, but I don't think it was meant to do erotica well. I'm pretty sure it was meant to be a tension driven film, but the subject matter made and the nudity made it billed as an erotic thriller and, thus, killed the expectations people had walking into it.

So what kind of works as a tense thriller turned out to be awkward erotica. I guess it all depends on what you thought you were watching when you rented it.... but, of course, the cuts also killed it.

Atlanta D.A. Dana Greenway (Sean Young) takes risks in a sting putting her investigator Hannah on the line. Colleen Dells comes to her complaining about David Hanover (Patrick Bergin). He pretends to be a well-known famous photographer and scared her into posing nude even having sex. A second victim comes with a similar story except this time he took her car. Dana's boyfriend/superior Stanton Gray suggests perversity could be more conviction worthy than the actual crime. With no one willing to file charges, Dana tracks down Hanover in Savannah putting herself in the position of his next victim.

Sean Young gels back her hair so hard that it looks like it hurts. It's an overly overt visual cue to denote a hard cold female lawyer. This movie is caught between a salacious sexploitation B-movie and a serious take on the reality of rape. It makes this very awkward and unappealing. It tries to go into some dark murky psychological space but it feels more like a melodrama. I don't know what exactly her plan was going to his place. It seems very close to entrapment. It would have worked so much better if he could pick her up from the bar or the photo lab. The movie feels awkward in many places. Following Hannah tracking down Dana is not compelling. The movie should have ended after Dana gets out of imprisonment. The drama can't go any higher and the last section runs too long. Director Lizzie Borden has made mostly erotic fiction and this doesn't have the best production value.