Faye Grant, the socialite best friend of the daughter (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) of New York City Mayor Rod Stiger is strangled to death as the ball drops in Times Square ringing in 1988. Part of a string of murders the police can't solve, the Mayor pressures police commissioner Harvey Keitel to reinstate his effective, but unorthodox and enemy making brother Kevin Kline to solve the case. Kline and Keitel are estrangenged owing to Harvey's using Kevin as a fall guy in a corruption scandal, as well as the commisioners stealing and marrying his girlfriend Susan Sarandon.
Police Captian Danny Aiello is none too happy about having Kline back either, especially when he commanders the best office in the precinct, brings in his kitten, his parot, expresso machine and painter best friend Alan Rickman as his assistant. Oh, dose this movie ever want you to know it's quirky. It's also soapy and silly and a mess. Tone is all over the place, picture can't decide how serious it wants to be.
Kline getting a grieving Mastrantonio into bed after a brief post funeral conversation is gross and creepy. People don't behave like normal people in this movie. I did like seeing Alan Rickman playing something of a beatnik like character, as opposed to his typical uptight types. Kline's Holmsian leaps of deduction strain credulity. Why is artist Rickman, against established character, also a computer expert, during the Reagan era when there weren't many of them and it was hard to become one? Why the killer's overly elaborate and obscure patterns of killing? Why does Bill Cobb have only one scene? Why so many good actors in service of one of the worst screenplays I've ever seen a major studio put to screen? This movie is so bad, that I'm puzzled why its not part of the pantheon of famously bad movies. An at times painful watch. *
No comments:
Post a Comment