The Fan

You may have skipped The Fan in theaters because you read the mostly negative reviews. Still, perverse curiosity is tempting you to take the smaller financial risk of renting it on video. After all, how bad could a De Niro movie be? The answer: not much worse. The actor gets off to a brilliant start as an increasingly unstable baseball fan who stalks his favorite superstar (Snipes). But, like Tony Scott’s direction, the performance is ultimately all superficial flash, full of old tricks that have worked better for other roles. De Niro finally swings for the fences in a ridiculously rain-soaked stadium finale that finds him stabbing and slashing various ballplayers, before getting blown away by a small army of cops. Oops, did I spoil the ending? Not really. It was rotten before I got there.