The Razor’s Edge on DVD

Bill Murray stars in and co-wrote this adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel about a young WWI vet’s search for the meaning of life.

Murray is Larry Darrell, a well off young man engaged to a wealthy girl (Catherine Hicks), who heads to Europe to do his bit in the “War to end all wars.” He volunteers to be an ambulance driver, thinking it’ll give him a bit of adventure, but instead he’s given an eye opening experience that scars him forever.

A changed man, he returns home to his superficial lifestyle but finds it - and those he knew and loved - shallow and meaningless and trivial. He’s seen too much to merely play in the sunshine, so he leaves this life behind and sets off on a globetrotting journey to discover what life is about. His search takes him from Paris to a British coal mine to the high Himalayas and, while he does learn much, he finds much more to learn.

But he does return to “civilization,” in Paris, where he eventually comes back into contact with the people he’d left behind.

Their lives, meanwhile, have been covered in a parallel story where we see Isabel (Hicks) marry on the rebound - a bonding with a man she doesn’t love the way she loves Larry, but who’s actually around and who will give her the life and lifestyle she thinks she needs. And where mutual friend Sophie (convincingly played by Theresa Russell) survives the death of her husband and child in a senseless car crash, only to sink into the depths of society as her life crashes around her while the 1929 stock market crash destroys many of the comfortable lives back home.

The stories reunite when Larry gets back to France. He becomes a close friend of Isabel (who still loves him) and her husband - and they come across Sophie in a chance meeting; she's now a sleazy prostitute working for a tough pimp.

Larry takes it on himself to save Sophie, and he does, but their impending marriage is spoiled by some “enemy activity” from a source far too close to both of them for comfort.

It’s an interesting flick, slow moving but with some good ideas and absolutely spectacular location shots. To call Bill Murray’s dramatic portrayal a change of pace for him would be an understatement and, for the most part, he carries it off well - though there are a few times when his smirking screen persona is allowed to show through and that detracts from the seriousness of this film.

The DVD is good, though not great. While the shots are beautifully composed and, in some cases, gorgeous, the DVD is soft and quite grainy in places, though the color is very good. Likewise the audio is okay, and makes some fairly good use of surround, but it isn’t up to the standards we’ve come to know and love with DVD. Still, it’s definitely watchable - and should be seen - and Columbia Tristar, as usual, has given the film the proper anamorphic widescreen transfer that makes it compatible with 16x9 TV sets.

It would have been interesting to have a commentary track featuring Murray and director John Byrum, but such is not the case. All you get is some trailers. However, Columbia Tristar regularly releases its DVD’s in new or special editions, so you never know what’ll come down the pike later.

The Razor’s Edge, from Columbia Tristar Home Video
129 min. anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1), 16x9 TV compatible, Dolby Digital 4.0
Starring Bill Murray, Theresa Russell, Denholm Elliott, Catherine Hicks
Produced by Robert P. Marcucci and Harry Benn
Written by John Byrum and Bill Murray, Directed by John Byrum

Tell us at TechnoFile what YOU think