Lurid whodunit, adapted from a Nelson DeMille potboiler, about a pulchritudinous Army psychologist who is found on the grounds of fictitious Fort McCallam, Ga., stripped bare, spread-eagled, lashed to four tent stakes, and apparently strangled. She happens also, if the foregoing is not inflammatory enough, to be the daughter of the base commander, who happens to have eyes for the White House. An ad hoc investigative team (John Travolta, Madeleine Stowe), who happen also to be ex-lovers, are given thirty-six hours to crack the case before the FBI moves in, a severe time constraint considering their hourly allowance for acting smug, cute, flip, and flirty with one another, kind of like a Nick and Nora in uniform. (Without, however, the pet dog to provide a sympathetic figure.) Director Simon West faces severe constraints himself in pumping up the flatfooted action -- examining evidence, questioning witnesses and suspects, etc. -- to the heights of his Con Air, though there is nothing to deflect him from the same overheated style of photography, seemingly putting its subjects under a sunlamp or inside a rotisserie grill. Wherever he "succeeds" with such pumping, it's to the detriment of the movie. James Woods, James Cromwell, Clarence Williams III, Timothy Hutton. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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