Sliver MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +1 Content: -4

Newly divorced Carly Norris (Sharon Stone) moves into an apartment in the Sliver Building. Unknown to her, it also has hidden video cameras all over it, and someone is watching her every move. Among her new neighbors are writer Jack Landsford (Tom Berenger), and Zeke Hawkins (William Baldwin), a video game designer. Carly and the mysterious Zeke become lovers. Zeke reveals that as the owner of the building, he can spy on his tenants. Initially repulsed, Carly is drawn into Zeke's world. When Carly discovers Zeke kneeling over the slashed, dead body of her prostitute neighbor, she is suspicious that his voyeurism may be a symptom of more dangerous quirks. Sliver, billed as an erotic thriller, is a classic example of a genre gone stale. The plot's got more holes than Swiss cheese, the acting's wooden and the writing laughable. Audiences should dispose of this one quickly as word of mouth gets around.

The plot serves merely as a device to get from one steamy sex scene to the next. In the inexorable march toward maximum stimulation, it stops just short of the NC-17 rating, which historically has spelled box office suicide. Several variations of graphic sexual intercourse occur many times, in various stages of undress. There is one very brief glimpse of full male frontal nudity, and several full rear male and female nude scenes. Language includes 22 obscenities and six regular profanities. Violence is limited to one moderately graphic stabbing murder and a man slapping a woman. The prostitute neighbor uses cocaine, but the use is shown negatively. Seldom has such a much-ballyhooed film delivered so little entertainment and so much trash for the soul. Don't see this film, and definitely don't rent the video - it will surely be NC-17.

Preview Reviewer: Pete Zimowski
Distributor: Paramount Communications Inc., 15 Columbia Circle, NY, NY 10023