At least it has a definite and deathless theme: voyeurism. A New York book editor, and not incidentally a specialist in tell-all celebrity biographies, moves into an East Side high-rise, and someone who signs himself "Secret Admirer" warms her new home with the gift of a telescope through which to spy on her neighbors across the way. This of course raises irrepressible memories of Hitchcock's Rear Window, but technology has marched far in four decades, and accordingly the secret admirer will turn out to be the building's low-profile owner, who has installed hidden cameras and microphones in every room of every apartment -- a selection of channels for viewing pleasure perfectly up to snuff with the offerings of cable-and/or-satellite TV. (At a cited price of six million, the tiers of television screens, the remote-control console plus high-backed swivel chair, and the push-button sliding panel behind which all this is closeted would be the envy of any James Bond villain.) As Rear Window knew very well, the moviegoer is uniquely easy to implicate in charges of voyeurism, and Sliver has taken careful note and passed the knowledge along. As Rear Window knew much better, however, or more precisely as Alfred Hitchcock knew much better than Phillip Noyce, it is also possible and desirable to integrate theme and plot, to interconnect them, to illustrate the one with the other. Noyce is a capable craftsman (Heatwave, Dead Calm, Patriot Games, in evidence), but he is not a notably creative type. When the plot languishes, he can only turn up the intensity by tightening up the closeups. The movie does set in motion a semblance of a murder mystery, but with limited suspects and even more limited imagination. Either this guy did it or that guy did it, and the only reason why is to fake out the audience. Sharon Stone, William Baldwin, Tom Berenger. (1993) — Duncan Shepherd
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