Q & A DVD Review
Added 7/25/2009
Another solid police drama directed by Sidney Lumet. This film is well-written and well-acted; however, in my opinion, its musical score is very lousy.
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Better than most good cop bad cop NYC cop stuff
Added 2/1/2009
The bad guys were well done - the good guys were pretty thin - and the sex star was terrible. Nick was very good - but no fun like in 48 Hours.
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Apart from establishing the premises of the plot, I didn't find the first hour or so all that intriguing - quite the contrary actually. The relationship story between Hutton and his ex-girlfriend was appalling. Those scenes played out like a bad soap-opera and had me fearing the worst for what was to come. Lumet should have kept his daughter out of it (and all scenes relating to it). It took a while for me to get used to Nolte as the bad guy too, as I've never seen him play the full-on villain before (he's usually the hard-edged good guy). He was as over-the-top as many of the other players in this cop corruption movie (doesn't Sidney Lumet do anything besides cop-corruption movies?) , and there were times when I could swear Timothy Hutton was trying to remember his lines.
Surprisingly, I actually found myself getting interested for a while somewhere near the last third of the movie when "character development" and the study of racism fade out to actual plot. Actually got interested to see if they were gonna nail him as the setting shifted over to Cuba and I had to pay attention less to "character performances" and got to see more story-line action. There are still too many names and subplots though which would probably make more sense if you were insane enough to watch it a second time. Some pretty sordid *#%&! thrown in as well for good measure. If I'd paid attention more maybe I'd have got more from it (but I doubt it). It was painful to watch much of the time to be truthful. This movie tries to take itself very seriously but there were moments near the end where I was almost ready to laugh.
I think the Amazon reviewer does a pretty fair job with this one. It starts off with some interest, smoulders under lame stereotype scenarios for the next hour, actually starts moving fast again as the ending approaches, but then loses it's pace and continues to get lost in names and convoluted action until, until.. I'm surprised I made it to the end actually. This movie had a bad kind of amateurish feel to it and it just kept going on and on like this review if I don't stop. Now I can go to bed. I thank the powers that be that it's over. I know there are bad things in the world, but this movie is surely one of them.
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Excellent performances by the three leading actors two of them with well defined roles, the third one, Nolte, at the line between bad and good with a clear definition of values at the end.
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A difficult investigation..
Added 2/16/2007
Well directed film with amazing performance by Nick Nolte...
Nolte gives one of the most scary performances of a bad cop ever...
Conveys the complexity and superficial front of a corrupt police officer...
Timothy Hutton is also very good as a new guy who is assigned to the case...
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