The screenplay by David Freeman throws out an irresistible plot hook -- more than a hook, really, a wide and finely woven net, the tuna-sized holes in which won't be found right off. A reporter for a magazine very much like New York, having fallen out of the good graces of his editor, makes up a story from scratch about a Manhattan pimp: "It was either that or find a new job." Although the jazz soundtrack, with Miles Davis on trumpet, harks back to the New York school of filmmaking of the 1950s, the script doesn't pounce on the hero's little lapse in ethics the way the Odets-Schulberg-Chayefsky gang would have done. Freeman, to this point, is setting the stage for a thriller, not setting it, with podiums, microphones, mallets, timepieces, for a debate. And if the hero's subsequent involvement with an actual pimp stretches our belief, there are plenty of individual good scenes, good performances, good plot turns, for compensation. Christopher Reeve, Morgan Freeman, Kathy Baker, Mimi Rogers; directed by Jerry Schatzberg. (1987) — Duncan Shepherd
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