It opens with Wesley Snipes, playing successful L.A. TV-commercial director Max Carlyle, explaining documentary-style to the camera why he happens to be in New York. He’s there for work and, he says, to visit, his estranged friend Charlie (Robert Downey Jr.) who he’s just learned has HIV. Circumstances cause him to miss his plane, so he takes in a concert with a new acquaintance named Karen (Nastassja Kinski). After Max saves Karen from being mugged, she falls into his arms, and together, they both commit adultery.

Back in L.A., Max rejoins his life of shooting highly pretentious commercials and bickering with his wife (Ming-Na Wen) over his holier-than-thou posing and his low sex drive. A year later, he’s back in New York to visit Charlie, now in a hospital weeks away from dying. There, he stumbles into Karen again. It turns out she’s Charlie’s sister-in-law.

Wesley Snipes in Mike Figgis' One Night Stand

Where Figgis rattled emotions with Leaving Las Vegas, he can barely get a pulse reading with One Night Stand. There are some tense moments that make Max sweat. When he returns to L.A. unshowered after his tryst, the family dog sniffs at his lap, and when Karen and his wife meet over Charlie’s hospital bed, he shifts nervously. But these instances exist within a lot of padding – scenes of dinner parties, bedside celebrations for Charlie, professional squabbling between Max and his boss – so that the core of what this movie is supposed to be about gets buried. What drives Karen and Max to cheat? The answer is simple: they’re in the same room, they’ve got some energy to burn from the stress of the mugging, and it’s way too late for anything good to be on television. And what are the consequences? Save for a few caught-with-your-pants-down moments, the players are kept from anything too sticky. In fact, One Night Stand may possess one of the lousiest payoffs in recent movie history.