Kubrick Movie Review Angers Studio

By MITCH STACY - AP

LONDON (AP) - Before this week, hardly anyone knew much more about Stanley Kubrick's mysterious last film, ``Eyes Wide Shut,'' than the fact that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman get really naked in it.

Sure, rumors abounded about the film, completed just before the legendary filmmaker's death. But Warner Bros. has not yet screened it for critics and Kubrick's rigorous insistence on secrecy meant few people knew what they were talking about.

Enter London film critic Alexander Walker, a Kubrick biographer who, as a family friend, was allowed to view the movie early.  Walker then published a review, including an in-depth plot summary, in Tuesday's Evening Standard  newspaper. And now, thanks to the Internet, ``Eyes Wide Shut'' has segued from the best-kept to the worst-kept secret in Hollywood.

The Evening Standard's Web site saw such a huge surge in traffic Wednesday that the paper said some high-tech rejiggering had to be done to make sure the glut of people trying to read the review didn't lock up the site.

Predictably, the people at Warner Bros. are upset by Walker's actions - as is Kubrick's family, according to a studio spokeswoman.

``He was a family friend, they showed it to him and he betrayed their trust,'' spokeswoman Nancy Kirkpatrick said. ``The family is very hurt and angry. It certainly wasn't the plan, and we are not happy.''

Kirkpatrick said the film was not to be screened for critics until July 10, six days before its opening in the United States.  Walker was out of the country and could not be reached for comment, but he defended the timing of his review in Thursday's Evening Standard.

``I was not under any embargo,'' the paper quoted him as saying.   ``Eyes Wide Shut,'' Kubrick's 13th film, was completed a week before the legendary director died in March at age 70.  If you don't want to know what it's about, then don't read any further.

The film, according to Walker's review, stars Cruise and Kidman as William and Alice Harper, ``protagonists in a story of how an apparently happily married couple, rich, successful New Yorkers ...  are set at odds with each other by their dreams and fantasies.''  After a party at a grand mansion where each is tempted by the fruits of another, they quiz each other about their erotic fantasies and find out more than perhaps they wanted to know, including the fact that Kidman's character once had an affair, Walker says.

``Eyes Wide Shut'' then follows Cruise on the rebound from his wife's sexual revelation, as he ponders necrophilia, patronizes a prostitute and explores sex games among New York's rich and famous, curiously clad in cloaks and Venetian masks.

``Even at its most baffling,'' Walker says, ``it is an astonishing work made with masterly control and at the same time a humanity that this director's detractors insisted he did not possess.''

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