A private-eye case that pounds away at that old punching bag, City Hall corruption, but from a moralist's perspective, or an editorialist's, rather than a genre writer's. Because the writer is Arthur Miller (yes, that Arthur Miller), it pounds hard and relentlessly, without a lot of niftiness -- a sort of dramaturgical George Foreman. As a result, the movie lacks propulsion, but it develops instead into an interesting sort of anti-genre piece. There's no action to speak of (unless we speak of the grappling dialogue). And the interview subjects encountered by the detective are not lucid, articulate, and sharing, like those dug up by Archer or Marlowe. And the detective himself (Nick Nolte) looks more like an academic in the mold of Leslie Fiedler, with a beat poet's beard and haircut. Most interesting of all is the New Age femme fatale played by Debra Winger, a neurotic, possibly psychotic, prostitute with a gift for self-dramatization and overstatement, and a scatter-brained tendency to stray off the main topic. (These two characters voice what might be an inner debate in the mind of the author: "I'm not too big on trash," says the high-minded one, apropos of the earthy one's reading matter. "Well," counters the other, "some trash is interesting.") All in all, it's little wonder, but also a small shame, that the distributor threw the movie into the marketplace unannounced and without support. Directed by Karel Reisz. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
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