Newspaper heiress slain! The husband, editor of the aforesaid newspaper and outspoken critic of the District Attorney, is indicted. A retired criminal prosecutor (and highly attractive divorcée) agrees to handle the defense as a way to even her personal score with her former boss, the D.A., and she is soon on more intimate terms with her client than is ethically advisable. Or artistically advisable, either. Romance crowds out all else. The pre-trial detective work is nil; the courtroom drama is elementary (although Leigh Taylor-Young does a good turn as a malicious witness). The movie, indeed, gives us deliberately little to go on so that when it begins its twists and turns, there is nothing to trip it up. And only at the finish can we look back and see how simple and arbitrary the whole thing has been: plotting by coin-toss. It is perhaps just ridiculous enough, however, that we could look forward at that point to reading about it in the newspaper the next day. Glenn Close, Jeff Bridges, Peter Coyote, Robert Loggia; directed by Richard Marquand. (1985) — Duncan Shepherd
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