If the late Christopher Reeve had made a dramatic entry about his unfortunate paralysis and the medical progress he was making with stem cell research, not to exclude his personal relationships and maintaining a career, I might have been more supportive. "Rear Window" starts off that way with his character, Jason Kemp, who suffers an unfortunate car accident that leaves him paralyzed with a severed spinal cord. He is a successful architect that manages to hold on to his job and still keep an ex-wife looking out for him. Here are the makings of a TV-movie like they used to make, not quite the disease of the week but close. Instead Reeve is saddled with a paper-thin, largely undercooked and visually unstimulating remake of a Hitchcock classic.
Reeve's Kemp is still working his architect job, though from home with the help of two nurses who make sure his breathing apparatus works and he is laid to bed. There is also an ambitious architect (Daryl Hannah, the Grace Kelly character) who helps him complete his latest project. To make the voyeurism new and wildly different from its 1954 counterpart, a video surveillance equipment has been installed so that Jack can keep an eye on an abused woman and her boyfriend, a sculptor. Unlike the original film, there is little to no drama in the other apartments whom Jack observes, including a gay couple, a single brunette who repeatedly takes off her clothes in silhouette, and some guy working on a computer. Not the most interesting bunch and nothing comes out of their situations because there is no drama. The only hint of drama is the poor blonde woman who then disappears, and Jack thinks she has been murdered.
"Rear Window" is not poorly done but it is mediocre in its character shadings and tension, and has nothing to stand out from various other voyeuristic thrillers in the wake of Hitchcock's film. Reeve is a standout here and makes us care about his plight and his weakened condition, mainly because Reeve really was a paraplegic. Daryl Hannah is no Grace Kelly, though, and Robert Forster's plain detective has a few colorful moments but far too few - unlike the original film, there is no camaraderie between him and Reeve since the detective only knows him because of the car accident. The killer is generic run-of-the-mill whose threatening nature you can spot his a mile away
"Rear Window" has no flavor, no real attitude towards its material and plays it too safe. Visually it is flat as a pancake without the three-dimensionality of the Greenwich Village apartment view of the original. There is a little suspense towards the end but the movie has no momentum, no real pizazz. If it were only a made-for-cable thriller with no connection to the Master of Suspense, I might have given it slightly higher marks.. And just like Christopher Reeve's sedentary character, the movie just sits there.
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