The Razor's Edge is a 1984 American historical drama film directed and co-written by John Byrum starring Bill Murray, Theresa Russell, Catherine Hicks, Denholm Elliott, Brian Doyle-Murray, and James Keach.
The book's epigraph is dramatized as advice from the Katha Upanishad: "The path to salvation is narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor's edge."
The elder miner discusses a Russian magician's book, lends a copy of the Upanishads, and suggests that Larry travel to India to gain a different perspective.
Larry's friend Sophie lost both her husband Bob and her child in a car accident and turned to alcohol, opium, and prostitution.
According to an interview with director John Byrum published on August 8, 2006, in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, he had wanted to film an adaptation of Maugham's book in the early 1980s.
The director brought a copy of the book to his friend Margaret "Mickey" Kelley, who was in the hospital after giving birth.
"[5] Dan Aykroyd suggested that Murray could appear in Ghostbusters for Columbia Pictures in exchange for the studio's approving to make The Razor's Edge.
[8] Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the film "slow, overlong, and ridiculously overproduced," as well as "so disjointed that Mr. Murray, for all his wise-cracking inappropriateness, is all that holds it together.
"[9] Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and judged the movie "flawed," pointing to the hero as "too passive, too contained, too rich in self-irony, to really sweep us along in his quest."
[10] Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote, "Conceived as a major career departure for comic star Bill Murray, The Razor's Edge emerges as a minimally acceptable adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's superb novel.
Tonally inconsistent and structurally awkward, film does develop some dramatic interest in the second half, but inherent power of the material is never realized.
"[11] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three stars out of four and remarked that "the movie stands or falls on whether Murray is able to disappear into his character of a young man searching for meaning in life after experiencing the horror of World War I.
The feeling here is that Murray successfully meets that challenge by playing his character with both a quick comic tongue and with soulful eyes.
"[12] Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "It's possible that moviegoers will find this mystic glider ride to the snowcapped peaks of the Himalayas painfully earnest, especially for a comic of Murray's wise-guy gifts.
He's perhaps the best thing about this intriguing but stubbornly ineffectual drama that only fitfully revives the dated charm of Maugham's rambling, meditative novel.
Club, reviewing the film in 2007, felt, "If The Razor's Edge is ultimately a failure, it's an honest, noble one", and that there were "all manner of minor pleasures to be gleaned along the way.
[16] Murray stated he deluded himself that there would be major interest in the film as a period piece, while the studio wanted to make a modern movie.