Firmly implanted in the miss column of Brian De Palma's filmography, a masterful novel by the late Tom Wolfe goes amiss and fails to translate properly to the screen. This thanks to a clusterf*ck of miscasting although I will point out some of the better performances. There's a strong racial element to the story and film which I'm not going to go into 'cause quite frankly that stuff doesn't interest me. The basic fun and suspense is the main character, a rich white man is involved in a hit and run and then covers it up, will he get caught or not?
The fact that the movie opens with a drunken Bruce Willis flinging salmon all over the place probably doesn't help things. The scene with the hit and run soon follows and the movie gets interesting for a bit with that scene before quickly descending into it's moral, racial dynamics, chiefly, that a rich white couple ran over a black kid in the Bronx.
One of the movie's few saving graces is Melanie Griffith who just rocks her part and dress for that matter. Legendary character actor F Murray Abraham who went uncredited due to a post-production dispute also rocks his part as a politician and it's nice to see him with lots of lines. After it's all said and done this one unfortunately deserves the moniker "skip the movie, read the book." 2.5 stars/5
And speaking of Tom Wolfe books, I highly recommend Man In Full, an understated masterpiece that hopefully one day will get a film version. Well, maybe not.
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