Breathe Deep
N CASE YOU WEREN’T SURE THAT MUSIC WAS GOING TO BE AT the heart of , the first human presence in the movie is a DJ. It’s New Year’s Eve, and on the voiceover we hear a sonorous, quintessentially urban-radio baritone inviting listeners to share all their ill-fated resolutions. “Tell us those lies you’re telling yourself,” the voice purrs, “promises you know you won’t keep.” A song begins to waft in like a desert breeze—thick, humid, vaguely exotic—evoking the names of various pop genres that by 1995 (when the film was released) were already unambiguously uncool: easy listening, adult contemporary, smooth jazz, quiet storm. Then, as if merely to accompany the music, a shot of one of the film’s stars drops us into some kind of action: it’s Whitney Houston, in sunglasses and headscarf, driving with the top down through a screensaver-worthy Arizona landscape. And
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