A smart, sexy little thriller that Miramax just kind of spit out in the late ’90s, B. Monkey stars Jared Harris as a mild-mannered English schoolteacher desperately looking for some excitement in his life; he finds it in the shapely form of Beatrice (Asia Argento), a tattooed Italian beauty who takes him for a walk on the wild side — a journey of spontaneity and sexual abandon that becomes treacherous when they get involved in the petty criminal activities of her no-good pals and former lovers (Rupert Everett and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). Harris, Rhys-Meyers and especially Everett are quite good, but it’s Argento who burns up the screen (no surprise there) as she gets naked and shoots guns without hesitation like any good dark dream girl should. A sort of Euro-Something Wild, this little-seen mini-gem never quite manages to create a sense of tension or danger but it’s chock full of pleasing and sometimes surprising sights and sounds — most of them involving the gorgeous Argento. Directed by Michael Radford, who’s working with much sexier material here as compared to, say, Il Postino.
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New On Netflix: B. Monkey