Final Analysis (1992)

Taglines: A psychiatrist and two beautiful sisters playing the ultimate mind game.

Final Analysis movie synopsis. A psychiatrist (Richard Gere) has an affair with his patient’s sister (Kim Basinger) who is married to a Greek mobster (Eric Roberts). The mobster is a tyrant over his wife. The psychiatrist wants her to get a divorce, but she is afraid of what her husband would do. She has a medical condition that becomes apparent when she drinks. One night she drinks anyway and attacks her husband. The psychiatrist uses his professional pull to try and help her out of the consequences of her actions, but becomes uncertain if she is telling him the truth.

Final Analysis is a 1992 American neo-noir thriller film directed by Phil Joanou and written by Wesley Strick from a concept by forensic psychiatrist Robert H. Berger. It stars Richard Gere, Kim Basinger, Uma Thurman, Eric Roberts, Keith David, and Paul Guilfoyle. The executive producers were Gere and Maggie Wilde. The film received mixed critical reviews, but was positively compared to the works of Alfred Hitchcock, particularly Vertigo. It is the final film of director of photography Jordan Cronenweth.

Final Analysis (1992) - Kim Basinger — Final Analysis (1992) – Kim Basinger

About the Story

In San Francisco, Freudian psychiatrist Isaac Barr treats Diana Baylor, a woman with obsessive–compulsive disorder suffering from frightening and horrific childhood memories, which include images of her drunken father and his death in a fire for which she wasn’t blamed. Isaac becomes concerned about Diana’s obsessive-compulsive habit of checking a handgun her sister gave her. Diana suggests Isaac meet her sister, Heather Evans, who knows things about their parents that may shed light on her neuroses.

Heather tells him that Diana was sexually assaulted by their father, and denies giving her the gun. She reveals to him that she’s unhappily married to a gangster, Jimmy Evans, whom she’s afraid to leave under threat of retaliation. Isaac confesses that he finds her irresistible, and the two have sex. Afterwards, Heather divulges that her and Diana’s mother left after their father raped Diana. Subsequently, their father died in a fire, which police suspected Diana might have started. Heather defended her sister, who has since blocked the ordeal out of her memory.

During a public dinner with Jimmy, Heather induces an episode of “pathological intoxication” by drinking wine and is subsequently taken to the hospital. While she recovers in the emergency room, she sneaks away with Isaac to an abandoned lighthouse near the Golden Gate Bridge. While climbing the stairs to a balcony, she accidentally drops her purse and lets loose a metal dumbbell handle, which she claims she keeps for protection.

Determined to help Heather leave her husband, Isaac asks his friend, defense attorney Mike O’Brien, to investigate Jimmy’s illegal activities. Mike informs Isaac that Jimmy is under federal investigation for a myriad of financial crimes. He warns Isaac to stay away from the gangster’s wife, but the infatuated Isaac follows her and Jimmy to a restaurant. Claiming she feels ill, Heather leaves the restaurant early, and gets a ride home from Isaac. Later that night, she drinks cough medicine, which brings on another episode of pathological intoxication. As Jimmy forces a kiss on her, she grabs one of his metal dumbbells and uses it to knock him in the head. He falls into a filled bathtub and drowns.

Heather is arrested and held on suspicion of Jimmy’s death. Isaac hires Mike to represent her, and enlists the help of an expert on pathological intoxication. The expert testifies in court that several of his patients have done harm to themselves or others in the throes of pathological intoxication. Due to the testimony and the absence of a murder weapon, Heather is found not responsible for Jimmy’s murder, due to temporary insanity. However, she is sentenced to confinement at to a psychiatric facility, where she will be released in four to six weeks, pending evaluation. Isaac serves as the head of psychiatry at Overland, and assures Heather she will be released as soon as possible.

During a symposium, Isaac overhears a colleague give a speech on one of Sigmund Freud patients who had persistent dreams of arranging flowers, the same dream Diana had described to him during an earlier session. Isaac realizes that Diana fabricated those stories. He confronts a courthouse guard who recognized Heather before her trial, and he recalls that she used to frequent the courthouse as a spectator, whenever Isaac testified on behalf of the insane.

Mike tells Isaac that Jimmy’s brother recently died, making Heather the beneficiary of Jimmy’s $4 million life insurance policy. Isaac goes to the hospital to confront Heather, who admits to the ruse but threatens him not to cross her. She claims to have hidden the dumbbell she used to murder Jimmy, which is covered in Isaac’s fingerprints after he touched it at the lighthouse.

Outside the hospital, police detective Huggins approaches Isaac, whom he suspects of murdering his lover’s husband in exchange for a cut of Jimmy’s life insurance policy. Isaac returns to the psychiatric hospital and tells Heather that he has reported her crime to two assistant district attorneys who want to interview her. She reminds him that double jeopardy prevents her from being tried twice, and agrees to the inquiry.