Behind the Red Door |  | Director: Matia Karrell
Actors: Kyra Sedgwick, Kiefer Sutherland, Stockard Channing, Chuck Shamata, Hannah Lochner
Studio: Showtime Ent.
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy New: $5.85
as of 3/19/2010 21:40 EDT details
You Save: $9.13 (61%)
New (18) Used (16) from $1.98
Seller: inetvideo
Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 26927
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 105 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: SHOD1095D
ISBN: 1932228861
UPC: 758445109528
EAN: 9781932228861
ASIN: B0000DIJNU
Theatrical Release Date: 2003
Release Date: December 16, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 01/31/2006 Starring: Kiefer Sutherland Run time: 105 minutes Rating: Nr
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
 A Lovely Surprise January 20, 2010
S. D. Wright (Boston, MA USA)
This movie was a lovely surprise for me. I commend Showtime for producing character-driven, grown-up movies like this, and Behind the Red Door was no disappointment. I really love it when an actor completely defies an iconic role the way Kiefer Sutherland does in this movie. Others have mentioned his subtle expressions, but what struck me was the clipped, almost affected way of speaking - just one of the many barriers this character put up between himself and the world. I found myself rewinding to replay some of his sarcastic, wry remarks. I had not seen Kyra Sedgwick in too many things (not a fan of The Closer), so I had no preconceptions about her. Her character was so multilayered and real, and her struggle to understand what happened to her mother was like an open wound. I loved her reactions, especially her temper tantrum outside after being attacked for her bad cooking.
I think a previous reviewer completely missed the point about the mother's death. It was not about resolving a murder mystery (as a lesser film might have attempted), but about Natalie's coming to grips with the event. Her comment to Roy, which I won't spoil here, about "knowing," and his agreement, summed that up nicely.
I loved that the film wasn't preachy about AIDS or about being gay. It was just this beautiful story about how life gets stripped down to the things that really matter, and all pretenses and masks fall away, when you know you only have so much time to put things in order. It wasn't sentimental or sappy or contrived or cliched. I felt like I knew these characters by the end of the film, and I had grown to like them as well. I absolutely will watch this movie again and again. I highly recommend it.
Red Door July 4, 2009
Lady K (USA)
This film was recommended to me by some members on the 24 fan site. I had never heard of it and was curious to see how Kiefer would pull off playing a gay man. His portral is priceless to say the least. "Roy" is very rich, very selfish and very sick. First contact with his astranged sister is difficult for both of them. This is a fantastic portrayal of a brother and sister who have loved and needed each other, then hated each other, then work their way back again. The commentaries on the disc are revealing and personal. I'm very glad to have spent the money on this film.
 hallmark/ lifetime illness-of-the-week schlock February 13, 2008
J. W. Hickey (Manhattan area)
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
Pauline Kael famously barbed that she might have been able to conjure empathethic tears for Bette Davis in DARK VICTORY if it weren't for the fact that the terminally ill Judith so nobly surrendered up such a posh-elegant life in such a posh-elegant setting. In kind, the terminally ill protagonist of BEHIND THE RED DOOR collapses in a bathroom the size of an enviably vast studio apartment--posh-elgant gold faucets and all. If ya gotta go, then die young, pretty, and rich.
The positive components of this movie are the cinematography of beautiful landscapes on diamond-sharp film stock, Kiefer Sutherland channeling his real-life father's best acting tics, and ... well, that's about it.
Stockard Channing looks young and attractive and not over-the-top brassy in the Audrey Meadows/ Eve Arden role of tough best friend, and the rest of a capable cast at times raise their paper-thin characters to two-dimensionality.
But the negatives include a self-serving screenplay, a muddled Daddy Dearest subplot that spins its wheels in redundant but non-advancing flashbacks and is not adequately resolved, and a heroine continually playing second banana to her own Medusan hairdo--the worst cocker spaniel coif since Daryl Hannah's flat curls in the drab remake of REAR WINDOW.
"No one really wants to be alone," a dying man intones somberly, though it's likely that ANYONE would prefer dying alone rather than be subjected to the nearly psychotic, solipsistic drivel this poor soul must endure in the climactic deathbed scene.
A major flaw in the script misses what might have been a moment of genuine interest. When the heroine is splashed with contaminated blood, she assures the doctor that she's safe because she has no open cuts. But in the first scene of the movie she stabs her own finger at the mere hint of her brother's existence. The self-stabbing was intended only as a a "visual" externalization, a disturbed sibling's metaphor rather than an actual aspect of a sustained character over the arc of a coherent plot. Convenient for the exposition but too complicated for the film's "third act," so we're expected to accept the sister's short-term lapse of memory: this is the kind of pretty-suffering movie where an audience's short-term memory is expected, demanded, and a blessing.
Sutherland plays "Roy," a man of limitless wealth, whose sister's principles keep her poor but pure. By movie's end, as each breath brings him closer toward death, Roy morphs from egotistical tyrant into a beatified saint spouting sputums of precious wisdom, while the script transforms Sis into self-satisfied Rod McKuen greeting card. Should we be surprised to learn that the film was produced, written, and directed by a woman whose now deceased brother's name was ... Roy?
Evidently the real-life Roy bequeathed his real-life limitless wealth to his real-life sister, enabling her to make this visually stunning but egocentricly shallow fortune cookie of a movie.
Real-life Roy's real-life sister was so real-life wealthy and nobly grieving, it appears, that she defied anyone else associated with the production to cool her jets and make the tribute to her brother she hoped but failed to achieve.
behind the red door October 18, 2007
Lorraine Zeidman (denver, co usa)
very good-i could relate to the movie because i was told i only had less than a year to live when i had cancer. you really do focus on what needs to be done in the moment and not what should be done in the future. very powerful message-i believe in a person's right to choose when to die.
 Behind the Red Door October 1, 2007
Carola Heil (Germany-Hessen)
everything perfectly, makes fun with amazon to buy. DVD is in a
good was entitled, everything okay. At any time again.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
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