January Man

Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon, Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio, Danny Aiello, Harvey Keitel, Rod Steiger. 1989.

Dang! With a powerhouse cast like that you'd expect a good movie. This one didn't know what it was. Drama? Psycho-killer/Cop story? What?

The best actor, albeit listed down toward the bottom, was Alan Rickman as the sidekick/artist. He was fantastic, in his typical morose-grumpy-loveable way.

The rest of the story - crud! Kline had been set up years before as a fall guy for his brother and the mayor but he has to be brought back because he's the only one smart enough to track down a killer. Implausible: first, in New York I bet their are thousands of detectives who work on cases like these all the time; second, in NY this psycho-killer wouldn't be all that big a deal, especially since, in this story, they hadn't even linked all the cases together, even though all the paperwork was in one big room, apparently just waiting for Kline himself; third - if the mayor and police commissioner had set anybody up for the graft that they had committed, they never would have run the risk. Politics over principle.

Anyway, we spend the first half of the movie with Kline mooning over Sarandon, whom his brother stole from him because he could buy her expensive wine, which makes her not a person anybody should be with, but we have to go through this agonizing self-searching for over half the movie before Kline finally starts to even think about the case.

Then, when he gets started, we're treated to a special use of - gasp! "computers" (this WAS made in '89, by the way!) which was pretty quaint, all told. I actually liked that part best . . . computers before the Internet were so cool! Like Model T Fords . . . or Tuckers!

Anyway, the investigation itself is pretty cool, and there's a good scene with Aello "I don't like you, but I respect you," which was actually a well-delivered line, and I think he was one of the few actors who could use it and make it credible.

Finally, though, the final scene in which Kline apprehends the killer suddenly turns this movie into a Pink Panther farce as he's dragged down the stairwell in the brownstone. I'm left thinking, "When did we get out of hand here?''

My advice - this should have been a novel. Then you could explore all these issues: drama/corruption/muder/forensics and make it all believable. The ending however - lose the sad attempt at comedy.

Because that just made the entire film a joke.



VG