“Although the film adaption is quite different from the original novel, ‘INDECENT PROPOSAL’ does have an interesting story of what one would do if a billionaire offered a million dollars to have one night with one’s wife. Although released in 1993 when glitz and money was part of the extreme in popular culture, I think the film would have more relevance and probably be more powerful today. Powerful performance by Demi Moore and Robert Redford is as suave as ever!”
TITLE: INDECENT PROPOSAL
DURATION: 116 Minutes
BLU-RAY DISC INFORMATION: 1080p High Definition, English 5.1 Dolby TrueHD, French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, Subtitles – English, English SDH, French, Spanish and Portuguese
RATED: R (For Sexuality and Language)
COMPANY: Paramount Home Entertainment
RELEASE DATE: June 9, 2009
Directed by Adrian Lyne
Based on the novel by Jack Engelhard
Screenplay by Amy Holden Jones
Produced by Sherry Lansing
Executive Producer: Alex Gartner and Tom Schulman
Co-Produced by Michael Tadross
Music by John Barry
Director of Photography: Howard Atherton
Edited by Joe Hutshing
Casting by Victoria Thomas
Production Design by Mel Bourne
Art Direction by Gae S. Buckley
Set Decoration by Etta Leff
Costume Design by Batrix Aruna Pasztor, Bernie Pollack, Bobbie Read
Starring:
Robert Redford as John Gage
Demi Moore as Diana Murphy
Woody Harrelson as David Murphy
Seymour Cassel as Mr. Shackleford
Oliver Platt as Jeremy
Billy Bob Thornton as Day Tripper
Rip Taylor as Mr. Langford
Bill Connolly as Auction M.C.
Adrian Lyne buffs the premise of Honeymoon in Vegas to a fine gloss in this yuppie melodrama that poses the conundrum of whether the loving husband of an equally loving wife will accept $1 million to allow his wife to spend one night with a billionaire who looks like Robert Redford. All the cynics please take a number and form a line at the right. Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson play Diana and David Murphy, high-school sweethearts who marry and who are doing very well — Diana is a successful real-estate agent, and David is an idealistic architect who has built a dream house by the ocean — until the recession hits. Suddenly, David loses his job, and they can’t make the mortgage payments. Dead broke, they borrow $5000 from David’s father and head to Las Vegas to try to win money to pay the mortgage on their house. At first, they get $25,000 ahead — but inevitably the house always wins, and they end up losing it all. While Diana is in the fancy casino boutique trying to lift some candy, she is spotted by billionaire John Gage (Robert Redford), who is immediately attracted to her. John invites Diana and David to an opulent party, and it is there that John offers David $1 million for a night with his wife. David is wracked by this moral dilemma, but Diana finally makes the decision on her own, with ensuing consequences for their ideal marriage and their bank account.
Author Jack Engelhard wrote a political/romantic and dramatic novel about a Jewish family in hard times and a billionaire Arab who offers a million dollars to sleep with the wife. A film that delves deep into Arab-Israeli conflict. The rights for the novel was purchased but the film adaption would be closer to home for the US and changed to relate to American audiences.
Directing the film would be Adrian Lyne (“Flash Dance”, “Fatal Attraction”, “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Unfaithful”) and the screenplay for the film was written by Amy Holden Jones (“Beethoven”, “Mystic Pizza” and “The Relic”) and produced by Sherry Lansing (“Fatal Attraction”, “The Accused” and “Black Rain”). “INDECENT PROPOSAL” was successful at the box office as it brought in over $266 million worldwide despite its negative reviews and even winning the Golden Raspberry Awards for “Worst Picture”, “Worst Screenplay” and “Worst Supporting Actor”.
The film is about David (Woody Harrelson) and Diana Murphy (Demi Moore), a couple that have been in love since they were teenagers and very much in love as adults. David is an architect and Diana is a real estate agent and for Diana, she wanted David to pursue his dream of building their home near the beach.
The couple move forward and have their dream home built but then the market crashed, America was in a recession, Diana was not able to sell any new homes on the market and David lost his job due to budget cuts. Behind in bills and needing to pay $50,000 on the home they just built, decide to borrow $5,000 and gamble and hope to win money in Las Vegas.
On the first night there, they do just that. David is able to win up to $25,000 and while he gambles, Diana goes through elegant shops at the Hilton and looks at a few dresses and wonders how she would look in one of them. John Gage (Robert Redford) who sees the young woman is fascinated and offers to buy the dress for her but Diana shoots back that the dress is for sale, not her.
As the Murphy’s celebrate the night with romantic, passionate love with their money scattered all around them, they start betting it all over again but this time, no results. David and Diana lose all of their money.
While walking through the casino, David sees John Gage and learns that he is a billionaire and bets $10,000 per gold chip when he gambles. John sees David and Diana so happy but he asks if Diana could join him quick to give his next game good luck. And this time, betting a million dollars. David roots for his wife and Diana reluctantly goes to John and blows a kiss to the dice and Gage wins.
In support of Diana for helping him out, he offers a room at the posh hotel and everything on the house on him. While checking out the room, Diana gets the black dress she was trying out the day before as a gift and both are invited to a party.
While alone, John offers a hypothetical question to David. If people can be bought for a million dollars. In this case, what if he offered a million dollars to the couple for one night with his wife. Both Murphy’s say they would tell the person to “go to hell”.
But John is serious. He makes his offer and tells them for one night with his wife, they would be set for life with a million dollars.
During the night, both David and Diana agonize over the situation. One night, one million dollars and they can eliminate their problems. So, the two decide to do it.
David gets his lawyer friend Jeremy (Oliver Platt) to do draft the paperwork and all is a go. Diana will spend one night with the billionaire John Gage. After some time has passed, David realizes that what he did is very wrong and doesn’t want his wife to do it. He runs back to the hotel but misses them. He agonizes over the decision he has made and now agonizes for his wife.
Will the Murphy’s ever be the same after accepting John Gage’s indecent proposal?
VIDEO & AUDIO:
“INDECENT PROPOSAL” gets its first treatment on High Definition with a 1080p transfer on Blu-ray. First, the good news. The good news is that certain scenes that incorporate the outdoors and sunlight look great and vibrant. There are some low-light scenes where blacks are deep and picture quality looks quite nice. Now, the bad news. Those scenes are just a few, “INDECENT PROPOSAL” has probably one of the worst high grain I have seen on a film on Blu-ray. There is one scene where Diana is teaching English to a class and the scene is so full of grain that she nearly becomes hard to see at one point. During the opening scene, with David sitting down near the beach and you see fog all around, high level of grain and color banding.   Not sure if the Las Vegas scenes were stock but those were quite grainy as well. Some scenes looks as if it was muted by digital noise reduction (DNR) and so some scenes look quite soft.
Overall, good and bad quality is all over the place. Some scenes are great but some scenes are absolutely terrible. The positive factor is that the scenes don’t last that long but I don’t think I’ve seen picture quality this uneven for a Blu-ray release.
As for audio, the film gets an English 5.1 Dolby TrueHD transfer (French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital). This film’s soundtrack is front channel driven. Dialogue is clear and understandable which is important. When there is music, John Barry’s (“Madagascar” 1 & 2, “Chaplin”, “Peggy Sue Got Married”, “The Cotton Club”) musical score does come alive and actually, really enjoyed the musical score. But this is not a film to expect any rear sound or subwoofer usage.
The casino scenes which are filled with people and sounds of the casino which I was hoping to hear come alive through my speaker system, was just average.  I was hoping to hear the ambient noises all around me but it seems that everything was front channel driven. There is a brief scene with the rain pouring down, which sounded quite nice from the front channels but overall, this is a dialogue driven film.
Subtitles are featured in English, English SDH, French and Spanish.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
“INDECENT PROPOSAL” features commentary by Director Adrian Lyne. The commentary was done for the 2003 DVD release and Adrian sharing his thoughts on the making of the film, from the love making scenes to how Las Vegas has changed since filming the movie and interesting enough, confesses that there are many things he disliked about the movie but did enjoy the performance of Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore. But this is a commentary that is filled with long pauses at times. But Adrian Lyne is a director who is known to tell audiences on his audio commentary that he has a bad memory and will do his best to remember things. If it was this difficult ten years later, perhaps I’m glad that he didn’t do a revised commentary 16 years later.
“INDECENT PROPOSAL” was an interested film when released in 1993. These were the times when “Lifestyles and the Rich and Famous” and “Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire” was on television, “Pretty Woman” was a successful rags-to-riches film, magazines showcasing the glitz of their metropolitan cities, the glitz of big business were at its high point and people just delved into wanting to know the lifestyles of the rich and people knew the names of the top supermodels of the time.
When the film came out, critics felt the notion that the rich would take advantage with those in financial need was preposterous. But compared today where America is in hard economic times, I sometimes wonder if this film would have done better today than in 1993. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if these situations happen frequently in the world. Also, it would have been interesting if the film were adapted today would be an exact adaption focusing on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
But if there was one fault of the film, was this portrayal of a perfect couple hitting hard financial times and the character of David just going a little overboard that his wife had sex with another man. Afterall, he did agree to it but then he decided not to and it’s too late. Share some of the blame, it was a joint decision and why he takes everything out all on her is just a bit too much.
I felt that Demi Moore was just enjoyable to watch and she did a wonderful job with her character. Robert Redford was absolutely suave and for Woody Harrelson, at the time, it showed us that the actor had more to give than what we saw of him on the television show “Cheers”.
If anything, I was a bit put off by the uneven picture quality of this film. Some scenes were just downright ugly and makes me want to go back to the DVD to see if it was that bad or the Blu-ray 1080p HD Transfer just elevated the grain. “INDECENT PROPOSAL” was not the prettiest transfer I was hoping to see on Blu-ray and the lack of any special features but a commentary was a bit disappointing.
In the end, I did enjoy the film and considering the time the film was released. Was it really preposterous for a financially strapped couple to accept such an indecent proposal? Especially compared to another popular film where a multi-millionaire would hire a prostitute to be with him for a week? Probably not.
Overall, “INDECENT PROPOSAL” was an enjoyable film that probably makes better sense now that the country is in an economic recession and people watching it again will probably find how powerful of a film it is now than what it was back in 1993.