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points for her courage in tackling a role (and other roles) that few actresses at the time would touch at the very different time in history that this was produced in. But everything else she does misses by a mile even with the beautiful dialogue her very sympathetic character is given to speak.

The performances of Scarwid and Everett are not poor throughout but when they are bad they are just awful.

The dialogue overall is terrific in numerous scenes but poor in others. I wonder what accounts for inconsistency. Then there is the plot. The lawyer/investigator hero Vince chases down one mysterious character who leads him to another mysterious character and so on. This disaster was a team effort.

As for the directing I have one major issue. The guy at the helm here apparently tried to communicate the phenomenon of background noise and its effect on conversations to add authenticity. Real conversations in life are obstructed by background sounds. Theoretically it should add authenticity when characters have difficulty hearing each other over such noise.

But when it is done poorly, as it is here, it not only looks contrived and silly it also makes it difficult to hear what the actors are saying. Where it is done here makes the effect an even more insipid example of cinematic eccentricity as it comes at critical junctures in the story. Some of the noise here sounds like comically innapropriate bullfight cheers.

To give you some idea of how bad it is we see one scene towards the end where Vincent enters his apartment and the opening of the door sounds like a thunderclap compared with the volume of the voices. Even when he just puts his keys down on the table it is louder than the voices speaking the dialogue. We see the same thing in scenes where their foot steps on the floor and traffic outside the window of an apartment is louder than the speaking voices of the actors in another scene.

Am I wrong in blaming the director? Seeing as a lot of work was apparently done here post-production to re-release this title on DVD 23 years later I wonder if some of these sound effects were not tacked on. It would make perfect sense if they were particularly if the sound quality was in some way compromised.

The fumbles here are even less excusable because of the intriguing plot, likability of some of the characters and a remarkable performance and character in the villain amongst the other terrific performances. The characters who are most likeable are the ones played by actors that don't know what they're doing and the unlikeable ones are played by the good actors who do.

Character actor Ron Rifkin appears again in one of about a hundred performances on TV and feature film he gave before anyone ever took notice. If you want to know what a real actor it is this guy. He becomes every character he plays where you just accept it and forget it is a performance. He is so convincing and blends in so well that people remember the characters he plays and not the actor. After about 30 years in the business he finally got the kind of recognition he deserved in films like Boiler Room and the TV series Alias.

Anthony Zerbe had more success sooner as a character and was more visible having it. Here he plays a gum-popping sleazo private detective/blackmailer.

Learn more about this author, Jason Daniel Baker.
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