SOURCE: Cunliffe, Simon. “A Real Man.” New Statesman 115, no. 2972 (11 March 1988): 38.

In the following review, Cunliffe explores the theme of the vulnerability of the family in the context of “the zeitgeist of AIDS-and-Reagan America” in Someone to Watch over Me.

Ridley Scott's new film, [Someone to Watch over Me,] its title taken from a George and Ira Gershwin lyric, is a cracking good thriller. And, like other contemporary Hollywood movies, it filters its taut, suspenseful plot through the zeitgeist of an Aids-and-Reagan America—making comparison with Fatal Attraction initially irresistible.

Mike Keegan (Tom Berenger) is an NY cop from unfashionably suburban Queens: happily married; one child. He is one of the lads, a good ole blue-collar boy. So is his wife Ellie (Lorraine Bracco). Although she is not above worrying to her husband about her sagging bum, she can mouth off with the best of them and proves a...