The Underneath

[The Story
Michael Chambers (Peter Gallagher), a reformed gambler, returns home to Austin, Texas, to attend his widowed mother's remarriage to Ed, a local security guard. Knowing that he is searching for work, Michael's new father-in-law offers to help him get a job alongside him. Later, whilst in The Ember, a local bar, Michael spots Rachel (Alison Elliott), the former girlfriend he unceremoniously deserted when, unable to pay his mounting debts, he skipped town. Tommy Dundee (William Fichtner), a crooked club owner and Rachel's latest partner, interrupts their reunion. Michael decides to stay around and takes the job at Ed's security firm driving armoured cars. Away from the prying eyes of the highly possessive Tommy, Rachel and Michael enjoy an illicit liaison during which they confess to still being in love with each other. They arrange to meet and run away but at the appointed time Rachel doesn't show. Michael later learns that Tommy and Rachel have married.

Solace is sought in the arms of Susan (Elisabeth Shue), an Austin bank teller Michael had met on his homeward journey. Soon after the marriage, Rachel again visits Michael in the house they once shared to complain that Tommy physically abuses her. Having followed her to the house Tommy swears revenge upon the pair. To save them, Michael claims to have wished to see Tommy to involve him in a bank robbery he is planning. Agreeing to the job, Tommy insists on working with his own out-of-town crew. Michael and Rachel plan to double-cross Tommy but things immediately go awry on the day of the robbery when Michael's shift partner is changed and replaced by Ed. As the heist unfurls, Michael is forced to intercede when Susan interrupts the robbery. Ed is shot and killed and Michael badly wounded. He wakes in hospital to a hero's welcome from all but his brother David, a cop with an undisclosed obsession with Rachel. David is convinced of Michael's complicity in the crime. Kidnapped from his sickbed, Michael is driven to a rendezvous with Rachel and Tommy. Aware of the planned double-cross, Tommy murders the kidnapper, but as he disposes of the body Michael persuades Rachel to slip him a weapon. When he kills Tommy, Michael is again wounded and deserted by Rachel who flees with the money. A lone figure follows her escape, the chief of the security firm, whom it transpires was the leader of the out-of-town crew.]

After the formally conventional and very American King Of The Hill (1993), Soderbergh seemed determined to play with structure, narrative and character. He filtered the conventions of the noir genre through his own esoteric, art movie approach. Working from Don Tracy's crime novel, previously filmed by noir stylist Richard Siodmak in 1948 as Criss Cross (the book's original title), Soderbergh, an avowed devotee of fatalism, took a complex genre in terms of narrative structure and made it even more complex, the staples of the film noir genre (the femme fatale, the confused, weak and greedy male protagonist and a society mired in corruption and spite) having only passing interest for the director. By creating a highly cryptic but intricately interwoven three-part time structure (events before the robbery, events during the robbery and events after the robbery), Soderbergh shows that he is far more interested in building a compulsive portrait of a man singularly lacking in purpose and direction. Michael Chambers can be viewed as part of a long list of male protagonists, whose lives have slowly unravelled, spiralling them into a state of apathy and unease.

Unlike the other characters in the film, Michael's motivations are ambiguous at best. Rachel desires money. Michael's pencil-moustached brother (a sure sign of villainy) David wants two things: Rachel and to be the architect of Michael's suffering - he despises his sibling for "skating along on looks and charm just like a woman". The truly terrifying Tommy wants Rachel, wealth and the odd opportunity to beat people senseless. The list goes on. Michael, on the other hand, is unsure of what he wants. He is self-destructive and has a lack of commitment, which the flashback reveals is the result of his addiction to gambling. He exists in a transient state. His awareness of his own impermanence is suggested by the self-help manuals he voraciously reads (Saying Hello To Yourself and Self-Esteem: A User's Guide). His self-obsessive selfishness is shown when he does not bring a gift to his mother's wedding and also wears his dead father's suit to it.

The machinations of Michael's mind and his seemingly permanent flux and confusion are suggested through Soderbergh's complex approach to narrative structure and chronology, and also through the way Michael is filmed. Often positioned within a series of imprisoning frames of some sort (an approach Soderbergh was to later repeat with Out Of Sight, 1998), Michael is also regularly shot in extreme and uncomfortable close-ups. This framing suggests a marked restriction of freedom and dispassionate emotional engagement with his surroundings. To remove Michael from the world around him and make him exist in a kind of artificial limbo, Soderbergh shot Michael through coloured red, green and yellow filters (an approach later used in Traffic, 2000). This added to the other-worldly atmosphere of the film and highlighted Soderbergh's personal approach to a genre renowned for its shadowy blacks and whites. The heady feeling of uncertainty is increased through use of hand-held camera and, à la Kafka (1991), alienating camera angles.

Gallagher gives an understated, almost listless, performance in keeping with his character's reserve. As Rachel observes, "beneath the apathetic exterior there was actually a raging indifference". Shelley Duvall is wasted in a small cameo as a kindly nurse but the other supporting parts are more rewarding. William Fichtner seethes with menace and barely suppressed violence as Tommy. Adam Trese likewise smoulders with resentment and malice as the near-psychotic David. The veteran Joe Don Baker also delivers a nicely-judged turn as Hinkle, the mint-munching security chief who, like many of the other characters in Michael's universe, turns out not to be what he seems.

With its intelligent and novel approach to narrative and the way meaning is communicated, The Underneath is certainly one of Soderbergh's most enjoyable films to analyse. Detractors of the film, of which Soderbergh himself is one, levelled accusations that it was a cold and chilling exercise, and an empty victory of style over content. Upon reflection, The Underneath is actually engrossing and imaginative. Its idiosyncrasies and non-conformist approach were influences on Schizopolis (1996) (which took the notion of parallel narratives to radical lengths), Out Of Sight and The Limey (1999), specifically in the use of overlapping dialogue, framing and convoluted time structures. Underrated and intoxicating. Ambitious and beguiling.

Reviewed by Jason Wood