Barry Sonnenfeld's further popularization of Elmore Leonard's already popular novel, chronicling the comic adventures of a Miami mobster in the Hollywood film industry. Anything that was broad to begin with has only been broadened; anything dark or darkish has been lightened; anything semi-dry, sweetened. The plotting, transplanted more or less intact from page to screen, is uncommonly dense and tricky for a movie of this or of any era, but the unfolding of it often tends to be abrupt and perfunctory: all the complexity with little of the savoring; all the riches and no time to enjoy them. The dialogue manages an honorable standoff between sparklers ("You think I see your films, Harry? I seen better film on teeth") and clinkers ("I think you're a decent guy, even if you are a crook"). And the movie on the whole fits in well with the Hollywood-on-Hollywood discourse of such recent predecessors as The Player, Mistress, Swimming with Sharks, adding something distinctively its own to the discussion, something to do with the steeply tilted balance in Hollywood toward business and away from art, toward stupidity and away from intelligence, and something to do with the natural incline of wheeling-and-dealing toward dirty dealing. John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, Danny DeVito. (1995) — Duncan Shepherd
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