Hammett (Frederic Forrest)
is a writer who just finishes his latest crime story and is ready to
cash in a few bucks for taking it to his publisher. But a visit
from an old friend Jimmy (Peter Boyle) from his times at the law
enforcement gets Hammett himself mixed up in a real life crime story
just like his characters in his stories. Set in the 1920's San
Francisco and boosted with a bluesy jazz soundtrack there's that
breeze of film noir running through this movie. Though I would have
hoped that the photography would have had a bit more film noir feel
to it, now it's just a bit too straight forward and apart from a very
few scenes doesn't play with the shadows at all. It's a shame as the
story and the settings otherwise had film noir written all over it.
Speaking of the settings, they were created very nicely and the movie
looked quite great. And as the soundtrack was very good as well, I
really loved the mood of this movie. Frederic Forrest carries the
movie with his great performance but the rest of the cast isn't bad
at all either. Peter Boyle, Lydia Lei and Marilu Henner just to
mention a few were great as well. The biggest problem of this movie,
in addition to the fact that the photography kind of misses the film
noir aspect of it all, was the story. It's unnecessarily complex so
it takes a long time before the viewer can even understand what's
going on. That makes the first half of the movie seem quite dull,
luckily in the end the story comes together nicely. But it surely
could have been a bit simplified as after all this is a movie that
relies on the feeling more than the story so a less complicated story
would have worked just as well or in this case even better. Despite
it's flaws I was thoroughly entertained and even though it's not a
brilliant movie it's still well worth watching.
78%
Can't find a trailer for
this movie anywhere online.
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