BEFORE: I had another Clint Eastwood film in mind, but then I noticed the similarities in the killers' victims between this film and "Son of Sam", so I moved it up on the list. Linking became quite difficult as a result, but I finally found that Michael Rispoli from "Summer of Sam" was also in the film "To Die For" with Dan Hedaya (last seen in "Daylight")
THE PLOT: Wes Block is a detective who's put on the case of a serial killer, whose victims are young and pretty women. The murders get personal when the killer chooses victims who are acquaintances of Block.
AFTER: If you thought New York City in 1977 was a swingin' place, what with Studio 54 and Plato's Retreat, and, umm, all those parked cars, it had nothing on New Orleans. The Big Easy appears to be all sex shops and sex clubs, and there's like a Mardi Gras party every single night, or so it seems. Maybe we just see one Mardi Gras and one Halloween, it's sort of tough to tell.
The title comes from a line in the film about how we've all got a dark side, and we walk on a tightrope between our personalities, or something. The analogy is a little vague, like most of the film. What's clear is that there's a killer, and he's targeting people close to the detective who's trying to track him down. Which doesn't make too much sense, because you'd think a killer would want to stay away from places where his nemesis might run into him - or he'd probably not want to give the cop extra motivation to find and stop him. But there's no telling how a crazy killer's mind works, I guess.
And this cop's got some pretty freaky friends - I guess that naturally follows, if you work the night shift and cover crimes in the sex trade. Whatever else that job is, I bet it's not boring. But once they've got a line on who the killer is and why he does what he does, it's kind of anti-climactic, and the film just sort of lumbers along until the end.
Pretty average all around. Nice to see some good old-fashioned police work, though, combined with (relatively) modern forensics.
Also starring Clint Eastwood (last seen in "Kelly's Heroes"), Genevieve Bujold (last seen in "Earthquake"), Alison Eastwood (last seen in "Absolute Power").
RATING: 5 out of 10 handcuffs
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