BEFORE: I still have movie sins to atone for - in this case, all I've watched of this film are the scenes early in the film with Jennifer Jason Leigh. You know the ones. But I don't have any idea what takes place in the rest of the film, so I'm rectifying that tonight.
Linking from "The Whole Ten Yards", Bruce Willis was also in "Mercury Rising" with Alec Baldwin (last seen in "Fun With Dick and Jane").
THE PLOT: When Fred Frenger gets out of prison, he decides to start over in Miami, Florida, where he starts a violent one-man crime wave.
AFTER: This is more of a character study than anything else - the contrast between a killer and a cop who end up playing a cat-and-mouse game. Except the mouse is quite deadly, so maybe it's more like cat and snake. And there's a bit of a disconnect because the evil one is also the attractive one, and the upstanding cop has more physical flaws - he's older, with false teeth, and he's just not as handsome. It's hard to believe, but the young Alec Baldwin was really in shape, and in 1990 he sort of resembled the current Ryan Gosling.
Unfortunately this film makes almost no attempt to dig into the characters and let us know WHY they do what they do. For a thief/killer with no apparent moral compass, it would be helpful to know what motivates him. Is it just the money, the late 80's emphasis on material things? Why is so eager to impersonate a cop and play vigilante? What sort of person kills the way he does?
Alternatively, what drives the cop? What keeps him going, what makes him get up out of bed and pursue the man impersonating him? Is it for revenge, justice, or just a paycheck? Without any of this, the film just seems ultimately pointless. And a movie can be many things, it can shock me, scare me, or entertain me, but I can't stand it when a film is pointless.
Also starring Jennifer Jason Leigh (last seen in "Greenberg"), Fred Ward (last seen in "Thunderheart"), Charles Napier, Nora Dunn (last seen in "Laws of Attraction"), Obba Babatundé, Paul Gleason (last seen in "Arthur").
RATING: 2 out of 10 haikus
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