Starring Wesley Snipes, Nastassja Kinski, Kyle MacLachlan, Ming-Na Wen and Robert Downey Jr. Directed by Mike Figgis Rated R, with profanity, nudity and sex Running time 103 minutes Jack gives this film a rating of 4 out of 10

(Nov. 14, 1997) -- Mike Figgis' One Night Stand is a stylish but strangely dispassionate slice-of-live drama meticulously exploring infidelity and its consequences. But for what purpose?

Wesley Snipes, Nastassja Kinski, Kyle MacLachlan and Ming-Na Wen co-star as four characters challenged by the aftermath of a one-night stand. Figgis adds a fifth character -- a dancer dying of AIDS -- for reasons that aren't ever clear (except that he serves as catalyst for the emotionally underpinning of the others). He's superbly played by Robert Downey Jr.

As the film opens, commercial director Max Carlyle (Snipes) is concluding a business trip to Manhattan. Before departing, he meets and falls hard for a beautiful woman named Karen (Kinski).

Though both are very married -- and not prone to philandering -- they find themselves tumbling into bed together.

Max then returns to his wife (Ming-Na Wen) who soon suspects something is wrong with her clearly distracted husband. A year later, when Max and his wife are called to New York because their friend Charlie (Downey) is dying, Max meets Charlie's conservative brother, Vernon. And he's shocked when he meets Vernon's wife, the same Karen he bedded the year before.

Thus, the groundwork is laid for emotional upheaval, but once it comes, it is surprisingly cool and unaffecting. Far more disturbing, of course, is Charlie's decline and death -- a sad, sad story but one we've seen often on film.

Figgis approaches the topic of infidelity nonjudgmentally, but he fails to infuse it with enough wit or pain or passion to hold the viewer's interest. The film is too cool for its own good.

It's a One Night Stand that should have generated more heat.