Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Seen-it-all New York detective Frank Keller is unsettled - he has done twenty years on the force and could retire, and he hasn't come to terms with his wife leaving him for a colleague. Joining up with an officer from another part of town to investigate a series of murders linked by the lonely hearts columns he finds he is getting seriously and possibly dangerously involved with Helen, one of the main suspects.
Sea of Love is a solid neo-noir thriller elevated primarily by Al Pacino's magnetic, lived-in performance as the rumpled, emotionally raw detective Frank Keller, with Ellen Barkin providing sizzling chemistry. The plot is a competent but familiar erotic thriller structure — lonely hearts serial killer, detective falls for suspect — that doesn't push the genre in surprising directions. Cinematography is workmanlike New York noir, atmospheric but not visually distinguished. The novelty lies mainly in the performances and the convincing adult sexuality rather than any structural or conceptual originality. The ending is the weakest element, resolving somewhat anticlimactically and conveniently, undercutting the tension that had been carefully built.