In other words, this is your standard 1960s hippie drama, moved back in time and adapted from the great novel by Somerset Maugham. If the movie really had a sense of its time (if it seemed to know that it took place in an era when the characters were much more unusual than they would be today), the hero's odyssey would mean more. But the flaw in this movie is that the hero is too passive, too contained, too rich in self-irony, to really sweep us along in his quest.
And that, I'm afraid, is the fault of Bill Murray, who plays the hero as if fate is a comedian and he is the straight man. Murray, who is usually such a superb actor, has taken the wrong path in this performance, giving us moments when everybody in the film and in the audience is moved, except Murray. There are times when he seems downright obstinate in his performance, giving us a ramrod posture, a poker face, and eyes that will not let us inside. Perhaps, in his desire to make a break with the comic roles we know him for, he was overreacting. That makes even more curious the moments in the film when he allows himself to be funny: The comic side of his character doesn't seem to be coming out of anything.
The movie has other flaws. It is more interested in showing him going to India than in really dealing with what he might have discovered there. It is fascinated by the character of the dissipated young woman (a wonderful performance by Theresa Russell), but never lets us really see the ex-fiancée (Catherine Hicks) as anything more than a predestined ex-fiancée. A rich uncle (Denholm Elliott) who lives in Paris is seen just enough to become intriguing, but not enough to be understood: Why did he become an expatriate?
"The Razor's Edge" is far from being a bad movie. Some of the scenes are very good, especially the uncle's deathbed farewell and Murray's first attempts to sober up Russell. But at the end I didn't feel engaged. I didn't feel that the hero's attention had been quite focused during his quest for the meaning of life. He didn't seem to be a searcher, but more of a bystander, shoulders thrown back, deadpan expression in place, waiting to see if life could make him care.
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