A woman police officer, Tess Harper, shoots a running man square through the head at a distance of fifty feet with a short-barreled revolver. Now, if you can believe that, you will get more out of this movie than I did.
It's not an especially BAD movie, in the sense that at least it's not insulting. And in fact the story had real potential. Gary Oldman of the droopy face is a high-end Boston attorney hired by filthy rich Kevin Bacon, who has been accused of serial murders involving diapers stuffed in the victims' mouths. (Don't ask.) Oldman is a Harvard graduate and therefore brilliant. He saves Bacon's bacon, to general rejoicing.
Without too much further ado, he finds that Bacon was guilty after all when the murders begin all over again and Bacon practically confesses. The problem is that there is no way to convict Bacon, and Oldman, out of an excess of chagrin, takes it upon himself to investigate the new cases and try to find inculpatory evidence.
The acting is pretty good on everyone's part. The dialog has some startlingly effective lines. The performers look and speak as one would expect such characters to -- except that the murderer, Kevin Bacon, stares ghoulishly at every dramatic moment. If he blinked his eyes AT ALL during the movie, I must have been blinking myself.
I don't know if that unblinking, murderous stare was Bacon's idea. I hope not. I suspect it was at the least encouraged by the director, Martin Campbell, because the fiend who is unable to nictitate is a cliché -- and the movie is full of clichés.
That life-saving miraculous shot by Tess Harper is only the climactic example. One of the most overused stings has an innocent person creeping about in a dark room, searching for something he or, more often she, shouldn't be looking for. All is quiet. We tremble along with the intruder. Then a clash of dissonance in the score, and a hand reaches in from out of the frame and grabs the person's shoulder, or she bumps into a figure standing in the shadows, or she hears a noise and whirls her flashlight around to reveal the face of a threatening intruder, or a pair of arms wrap around her neck from behind. I counted at least four uses of this hoary device before I stopped looking for them.
I'll mention just one other. A terrified man stumbles through a public park during a downpour, trips over some brush, rolls helplessly down the side of a hill, and comes to rest on a mutilated human body.
Enough.
It's too bad, because there are signs of intelligence glimmering through this hackneyed murk. Your Honor -- ladies and gentleman of the jury -- I direct your attention to the anecdote told by the dying librarian in the hospital, the little parable about Justice Brandeis and the shadow of the law. Corroborating evidence, which I now introduce as Exhibit Number Two, is provided by Kevin Bacon's fable, the one in the punt, of the man caught whipping God's dog. Nobody brings up Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism versus Kant's categorical imperatives, although they might have, but thank God they didn't.
A shame it was all thrown away in the service of titillating the audience through the use of commercial tricks.
It's not an especially BAD movie, in the sense that at least it's not insulting. And in fact the story had real potential. Gary Oldman of the droopy face is a high-end Boston attorney hired by filthy rich Kevin Bacon, who has been accused of serial murders involving diapers stuffed in the victims' mouths. (Don't ask.) Oldman is a Harvard graduate and therefore brilliant. He saves Bacon's bacon, to general rejoicing.
Without too much further ado, he finds that Bacon was guilty after all when the murders begin all over again and Bacon practically confesses. The problem is that there is no way to convict Bacon, and Oldman, out of an excess of chagrin, takes it upon himself to investigate the new cases and try to find inculpatory evidence.
The acting is pretty good on everyone's part. The dialog has some startlingly effective lines. The performers look and speak as one would expect such characters to -- except that the murderer, Kevin Bacon, stares ghoulishly at every dramatic moment. If he blinked his eyes AT ALL during the movie, I must have been blinking myself.
I don't know if that unblinking, murderous stare was Bacon's idea. I hope not. I suspect it was at the least encouraged by the director, Martin Campbell, because the fiend who is unable to nictitate is a cliché -- and the movie is full of clichés.
That life-saving miraculous shot by Tess Harper is only the climactic example. One of the most overused stings has an innocent person creeping about in a dark room, searching for something he or, more often she, shouldn't be looking for. All is quiet. We tremble along with the intruder. Then a clash of dissonance in the score, and a hand reaches in from out of the frame and grabs the person's shoulder, or she bumps into a figure standing in the shadows, or she hears a noise and whirls her flashlight around to reveal the face of a threatening intruder, or a pair of arms wrap around her neck from behind. I counted at least four uses of this hoary device before I stopped looking for them.
I'll mention just one other. A terrified man stumbles through a public park during a downpour, trips over some brush, rolls helplessly down the side of a hill, and comes to rest on a mutilated human body.
Enough.
It's too bad, because there are signs of intelligence glimmering through this hackneyed murk. Your Honor -- ladies and gentleman of the jury -- I direct your attention to the anecdote told by the dying librarian in the hospital, the little parable about Justice Brandeis and the shadow of the law. Corroborating evidence, which I now introduce as Exhibit Number Two, is provided by Kevin Bacon's fable, the one in the punt, of the man caught whipping God's dog. Nobody brings up Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism versus Kant's categorical imperatives, although they might have, but thank God they didn't.
A shame it was all thrown away in the service of titillating the audience through the use of commercial tricks.