Peter Bogdanovich trespasses on Graham Greene territory, a story of life in exile, a wallow in waywardness, and an undoubted treat for the alienated and the sullied. The narrative exposition in general, and the badly recorded Orson Welles-ian dialogue in particular, is like slush, but the movie achieves a certain shape by virtue of its rock-solid titular character, an American expatriate and genuine "people person" named Jack Flowers, who works as a sexual procurer in Singapore. Too much of the reason that Flowers appears so solid is that Ben Gazzara, in a reprise of his Killing of a Chinese Bookie performance, is so monotoned and dull. Bogdanovich's classically "invisible" direction seems to be a bit dispirited, which is perhaps not inappropriate for a movie marooned in Singapore. And in spite of some half-baked references to the war in Vietnam, the movie has almost no sense of time, perhaps also not inappropriate, and could just as easily be taking place in the period of von Sternberg's Shanghai Express. Photographed by Wim Wenders's regular cameraman, Robby Müller. (1979) — Duncan Shepherd
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