BEFORE: Sean Connery carries over from last night's film, but I'm done with Soviets (for now), and moving on to Japanese villains.
THE PLOT: At the offices of a Japanese corporation, during a party, a woman is found dead, apparently after some rough sex. A police detective, Web Smith is called in to investigate.
AFTER: OK, my bad - this is not a film about spies, it's about homicide detectives investigating a murder at a Japanese company's L.A. office. But there is some international intrigue here, and political ramifications, so I'm going to include it.
There's also a lot of stuff about the cultural differences between Japanese people and Americans - stuff like bowing, and exchanging business cards (even with the police!) and different attitudes toward crimes like corporate espionage. Some of it seems to rely on simple stereotypes - it seems like all Japanese men enjoy singing karaoke and eating sushi off of naked women. Really? Or is that just in the executive lunchroom?
I can't really fall back on my typical complaint that "nothing happened" here. Stuff definitely happened, but not all of it fit together especially well. There were a number of plot elements that went absolutely nowhere (like the corruption charges against the main characters - what's the point of bringing up past cases, unless they relate to this one?) and connections that meant nothing (why establish a cop's ex-wife as a character, and then do nothing with her, story-wise?)
Sure, you can call these things red herrings, but it seemed to me more like loose ends that forgot to be tied up, or things mentioned once and then forgotten about.
Movies like this one, and "The Russia House", and "Tailor of Panama", make we want to skip ahead to something with real action, like "The Bourne Identity", or just scrap the whole spy-movie chain and watch "Avatar". We'll see...
Also starring Wesley Snipes (last seen in "Blade: Trinity"), Harvey Keitel (last seen in "The Two Jakes"), Tia Carrere, Ray Wise (last seen in "Powder"), Steve Buscemi (last seen in "Hudsucker Proxy", and making his 13th appearance in my countdown tonight), Mako (last seen in "Tucker: The Man and His Dream"), and a bunch of TV actors: Sam Lloyd (best known as the loser hospital administrator on "Scrubs"), Tamara Tunie (best known as the coroner from "Law & Order: SVU"), Dan Butler (best known as "Bulldog" Briscoe on "Frasier"), and another apperance by Daniel Van Bargen (last seen in "Thinner", but best known for "Seinfeld" and "Malcolm in the Middle")
RATING: 5 out of 10 security cameras
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