An American scholar named Dr. Slaughter (Sigourney Weaver) works for a pro-Arab think tank in London. To supplement her meagre pay, she takes on work as an escort. Even more improbably, she only starts doing this because someone anonymously sends her a videotape about the escort industry. Incredibly, she doesn’t even adopt a fake name. (She might not have minded people knowing about her dual career, but the sexist snobs at her institute surely would have done.) Through this new line of work she meets Lord Bulbeck (Michael Caine), a diplomat brokering a peace deal in the Middle East and a man with dangerous enemies.
The disjointed, badly plotted narrative lurches from scene to scene. It hints at a complex web of interconnected threads, but the “big reveal” – when it finally arrives – turns out to be disappointingly simplistic.
Many of the scenes seem to have been invented as an excuse to get Sigourney Weaver to take her clothes off – such as her sitting in the bath and calling in the landlord to tell him that the shower doesn’t work. Yet the film tries to have its cake and eat it by giving her lines about gender equality and being “in control”. You wonder how the iconic star of Alien, Ghostbusters, Working Girl and Gorillas in the Mist could possibly have been happy accepting this role.
On the plus side, there’s a certain chemistry between Weaver and Caine. Most of the acting is reasonably strong, and the script avoids cliché. But Half Moon Street falls flat because director Bob Swaim seems unable to handle basic storytelling or plot logic. Instead, he creates a muddled mess that feels both half-baked and exploitative.
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