A post-Oliver North political intrigue to do with a shady arms deal in the New Mexico desert. Like a lot of thrillers, it sets up all right. An apparent suicide is discovered (gun at one hand, briefcase loaded with half a million dollars at the other) in the bailiwick of a small-town deputy sheriff. After a bit of highly efficient and lucky detective work (as if acting on a tip from the scriptwriter), he follows his only and slim lead into puff after puff of plot fog -- an agreeable enough sensation for the time-biding, thumb-twiddling spectator. (The fog is strictly figurative: the sights captured by the Australian-born director, Roger Donaldson, are clean and airy yet not excessively "scenic.") The agreeability begins to fade as soon as the fog starts to clear, or rather as soon as it gets tracked to its originating fog machine: a formulaic conspiracy plot whose jadedness, cynicism, and self-servingness outrival those ascribed in it to the C-fucking-IA (or was it the CI-fucking-A?). Willem Dafoe, Mickey Rourke, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd
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