Thank goodness Bruce Willis and Sarah Jessica Parker have good chemistry because they are not allowed any time for a relationship to develop. In a blink they are smack-dab in a romance. But this police thriller has some funky, operatic and over-the-top moments that show the plot's weaknesses. The clichés keep piling up from the bad-mouthing, trash- talking banter between "Irish" and "Italian" cops, to the endless profanity, and the staginess of the big scenes. It's also pretty violent.
Bruce Willis is almost always a good action hero. Sarah Jessica Parker knows how to do the girl part perfectly. Their scenes have real chemistry. Dennis Farina is always a great cop and he manages to keep you fascinated even when his sons are acting perfectly ridiculous. John Mahoney, Andre Braugher and Timothy Busfield show their talent and professionalism and are captured before bigger roles made them major TV stars. I did find Braugher chewing up the scenery a bit too lustily in the hearing scene.
I save Robert Pastorelli's utterly hammy appearance for last. He's a fine actor and I loved his classically funny house painter, Eldin on Murphy Brown. But he's assigned the psycho role here and the screenplay doesn't give him any depth at all. He's just an insane psychopath. There's not a clue as to why he behaves as he does. Maybe the director should have stepped in more to tone it down. The final confrontation with Willis steals from every thriller you've ever seen, most obviously Fatal Attraction. And it goes on forever.
Rerun on TV it was fun to encounter this movie, which I had not seen when it was first released.
Bruce Willis is almost always a good action hero. Sarah Jessica Parker knows how to do the girl part perfectly. Their scenes have real chemistry. Dennis Farina is always a great cop and he manages to keep you fascinated even when his sons are acting perfectly ridiculous. John Mahoney, Andre Braugher and Timothy Busfield show their talent and professionalism and are captured before bigger roles made them major TV stars. I did find Braugher chewing up the scenery a bit too lustily in the hearing scene.
I save Robert Pastorelli's utterly hammy appearance for last. He's a fine actor and I loved his classically funny house painter, Eldin on Murphy Brown. But he's assigned the psycho role here and the screenplay doesn't give him any depth at all. He's just an insane psychopath. There's not a clue as to why he behaves as he does. Maybe the director should have stepped in more to tone it down. The final confrontation with Willis steals from every thriller you've ever seen, most obviously Fatal Attraction. And it goes on forever.
Rerun on TV it was fun to encounter this movie, which I had not seen when it was first released.