Ο 4ος Άνθρωπος

Liz5.0

So wild to see an erotic thriller that actually flips the usual gender dynamics by openly placing a hetero woman between a bisexual man and the piece of trade that is the object of his lust. Maybe it's just me, but more movies should have men trying to make it with crucified twink Jesus?I'd never seen any of Verhoeven's pre-Hollywood films before this, so I should probably get on that...

nick4.5

The Fourth Man is a horrifying bisexual lucid dream: erotic, twisty, trippy, and probably Paul Verhoeven's most underrated work.The Fourth Man details a sexually oppressed writer's paranoid sex expedition with both a beautiful woman in red, and her equally alluring, bisexual boyfriend. It's full on European with its extreme sexuality, offering both male and female frontal nudities and firey sex scenes. Verhoeven masterfully incorporated religious elements into the sex tale, as an effort to shush his critics saying his previous works lacked artistic depths, and it paid off greatly, creating an offbeat and somewhat blasphemous vibe that equally parts sucks the audience in and pushes the religious one away. Verhoeven also made the perfect decision to keep the mystery ambiguous, leaving much room for interpretations. What brings this movie to the next level for me is the marvelous acting, especially from leading man Jeroen Krabbé, whose massive charisma on screen and daring nudity add so much likeability to this already mesmerizing project.Overall The Fourth Man is a consistently suspenseful and raunchily queer effort from the great Paul Verhoeven that deserves to be watched and enjoyed by a much wider audience. Highly recommended.

laird4.0

Doesn't work as a sequel to The Third Man, but this is one hot Dutch -Hoeven. Paulie V excels at over-boiling everything, bringing all of the elements Hitchcock would have had to bury in implication and subtext floating to the surface. He's mixing it in the red with a heavy hand allowing him to layer in subtleties underneath the pop sheen that could easily go unnoticed by someone just looking to watch a pervy thriller. It would seem cacophonous if it wasn't all so slickly deployed (that Jan de Bont photography!). It's unsurprising that he was whisked away to Hollywood shortly after this and equally unsurprising that he was continually misunderstood (Showgirls) and eventually and unceremoniously excused from further mainstream ventures. It's a shame, the world needs more erotic thrillers that are about Catholic guilt and Christ parables that take the form of cyborg policeman action romps.