Rating: R
Genre:
Thriller
Theatrical Release: 08/10/1990(USA)
Release Date: 01/20/1998
SubTitles: English/Espanol/KO
Dubbed: English/French/Espanol
Sound: DS
Run Time: 114 Minutes
Flags: Violence, Questionable for Children, Profanity
Distributor/Studio: Columbia TriStar
Despite its occasional lapses into silly self-consciousness,
Flatliners is one of the most intriguing and well-constructed supernatural thrillers of the 1990s. A group of brilliant medical students decide to literally play with life and death. They put themselves in suspended animation, electronically inducing a near-deathlike state and then pulling out of it at the last possible moment. Things get hairy when one of the students (
Kiefer Sutherland) becomes obsessed with the notion of
really dying, the better to experience the Afterlife before being revived--if he
can be revived. In her first dramatic starring role (playing a sensitive young lady on a misguided guilt trip),
Julia Roberts is very, very good--completely bereft of movie-star mannerisms. Audiences flocked to see
Flatliners back in 1990 due to the highly publicized off-screen romance between
Roberts and
Sutherland. Oh, yes:
Kevin Bacon and
William Baldwin are in the picture, too.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
;)
