SEX! CONTROVERSY! BOX OFFICE!

Sexual harassment is a good subject for legal briefs, psychological studies and outraged essays. It is not a natural topic for popular entertainments. Typically (to put it mildly), the protagonist lacks heroic stature, and it is hard to spin a plot of page-turning intricacy from such a crude offense.

Clever Michael Crichton understood all that when he wrote his best seller Disclosure. That's why he made the aggressor a female executive, her victim a happily married man who has been passed over for her job--and with whom, a decade earlier, she had a hot affair. The role reversal alone gives the...