Movie Review: Demolition Man (1993)

Genre: Science Fiction Action Comedy  

Director: Marco Brambilla  

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne, Bob Gunton  

Running Time: 115 minutes  

Synopsis: In a crime-infested Los Angeles of 1996, police officer John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) arrests deranged crime lord Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes), but with high collateral damage. Both are sentenced to years of cryogenic freezing with subliminal rehabilitation. Phoenix awakens in 2032, where Dr. Raymond Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne) lords over a docile and crime-free society but with all pleasures illegal. Phoenix immediately unleashes chaos, forcing the police chief (Bob Gunton) to unfreeze Spartan, who teams up with police officer Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock). Bewildered by new societal rules, Spartan revives brute force methods to track down his nemesis.

What Works Well: This eminently quotable genre-mashing adventure has just as much fun deriding a cancel-happy culture as it does poking fun at itself with sturdy comic underpinnings. A society where the police force no longer knows how to fight crime - because there is no crime to fight - sounds utopic until the blandness of defangment surfaces in everything from outlawed cursing to the forgotten pleasures of physical contact. Into this sterility trundle Stallone's Spartan and Snipes' Phoenix as two dinosaur macho men on either side of the law, and they both quickly recognize a paradise worth wrecking. Sandra Bullock adds a sparkle as the bright-eyed police officer weirdly obsessed with the good old days of carnage.

What Does Not Work As Well: The plight of the (literal) underground resistance is short-changed, while the fragments of an abandoned sub-plot related to Spartan's daughter cause confusion. Several scenes double down on over-the-top action, Stallone and Snipes unlikely survivors of repeated unconstrained firepower and explosions. 

Key Quote:
Spartan: I just do my job and things get...
Lenina: ...get demolished.

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Movie Review: Passenger 57 (1992)

An action thriller, Passenger 57 adopts a B-movie ethos to deliver a familiar story of one good guy standing up to a band of terrorists.

Ruthless international terrorist and airline hijacking expert Charles Rane (Bruce Payne) is arrested by the FBI in Miami just as he was about to undergo face-changing plastic surgery.

Underemployed airline security expert John Cutter (Wesley Snipes) is still mourning his wife, who was killed by a violent robber. Cutter is now prodded back into active service by his friend Sly Delvecchio (Tom Sizemore), the head of security with Atlantic International Airlines. Cutter agrees to travel to Los Angeles to meet his new bosses, and coincidentally boards the commercial flight being used by FBI agents to escort Rane to trial.

Several of Rane's allies are on the flight, and they kill his FBI escorts and take control of the plane. Cutter is the only person standing between the terrorist and freedom, and gets help from feisty flight attendant Marti Slayton (Alex Datcher) as the plane heads towards a small Louisiana airport.

Borrowing ideas from Die Hard and its first sequel, Passenger 57 adds a positive black power message and blows through in a grand total of 84 frenzied minutes. Director Kevin Hooks leverages Wesley Snipes' comfort with martial arts and his smooth - almost disinterested - charisma, and keeps the action moving with hectic urgency.

The breakneck pacing cannot disguise flat characterizations, cheap sets, logic gaps, and frequent physics law violations. The weirdly appropriate but still quite horrid Stanley Clarke soundtrack mushes the worst of the 70s with the worst of the 80s in a celebration of softcore porn thrillers. The attempted insertion of interesting secondary characters is summarily abandoned, as a mom and child on the flight just disappear, Tom Sizemore flaps, and Bruce Greenwood as an airline executive is unsure what his role is. In an early appearance, Elizabeth Hurley gets to wield a gun around, but her prominence fades.

The screenplay by David Loughery and Dan Gordon swings for memorable one-liners at every opportunity and mostly misses, but does land one beauty with Cutter's "always bet on black" proclamation. And it is notable that every good character here is black, and all the terrorists and dimwit small-town cops are white.

Bruce Payne has a ton of fun as psychotic and worthwhile adversary Charles Rane (known as the Rane of Terror), always on the prowl for his next cold-blooded kill as fuel for a smarmy self-congratulatory streak. Passenger 57 is joyfully cheesy, and knows it.



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Movie Review: U.S. Marshals (1998)

An action-packed thriller, U.S. Marshals is a fast-paced chase adventure with a rich plot and no shortage of over-the-top moments.

Chicago tow truck driver Mark Warren (Wesley Snipes) is arrested for allegedly killing two Department of Diplomatic Security (DDS) agents at a shootout in the United Nations building parkade. On a prisoners' flight to New York, Warren narrowly escapes an assassination attempt, but in the ensuing melee, the plane crashes. Also on board is US Marshal Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones). He helps rescue most of the flight's passengers, but Warren escapes and is deemed a fugitive.

Gerard assembles his team and gives chase, with DDS officials inserting their agent John Royce (Robert Downey Jr.) into Gerard's crew. Warren is really Mark Sheridan, an ex-government agent caught in a web of betrayal and deception involving state espionage and a Chinese embassy assassin. Sheridan seeks help from his girlfriend Marie Bineaux (Irène Jacob) and makes his way to New York to try and clear his name, with Gerard hot on his trail.

A spin-off from the The Fugitive, U.S. Marshals provides high quality if also occasionally excessive entertainment. Every highlight rides the line between well-done and over-done, director Stuart Baird generally defaulting to a more-is-more attitude, leading to a relatively mammoth running time of 131 minutes. Despite the length, a high level of continuous exhilaration ensures solid engagement.

With quality production values, sharp editing, and frequent scenery changes to keep the visuals fresh, the spectacular scenes arrive early and often. The brilliant plane crash is an epic exercise in what-else calamity. The manhunt then goes through a swamp, followed by a cemetery shoot-out enlivened by a sniper. A breathless pursuit through a New York building ends with a memorable rooftop stunt. 

A complex but comprehensible plot underpins the action, and the central conspiracy is revealed in traceable steps. Of course the fugitive Mark Warren was never going to remain the antagonist, and co-writers Roy Huggins and John Pogue allow the dynamic between Gerard and Warren to gradually evolve as the Marshal starts to understand the layers of subterfuge surrounding events at the United Nations shoot-out.

The trio of Tommy Lee Jones, Wesley Snipes, and Robert Downey Jr. provide ample star power to keep up with all the kinetic energy. Jones is the cerebral centrepiece, with Snipes and Downey Jr. offering worthy opponents and pleasing gravitational pulls. In contrast, Gerard's team of agents (Joe Pantoliano, Daniel Roebuck, Tom Wood, and LaTanya Richardson) generally just make up the numbers. Kate Nelligan appears in a couple of scenes as Gerard's boss.

U.S. Marshals covers mostly familiar ground, but with a sparkling polish.



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Movie Review: The Art Of War (2000)

A routine action thriller, The Art Of War is artlessly pretentious.

Agent Neil Shaw (Wesley Snipes) is a covert operative for the United Nations, using vaguely unethical tactics to push forward globalization and trade objectives. Along with fellow agents Bly (Michael Biehn) and Novak (Liliana Komorowska) he reports to Eleanor Hooks (Anne Archer), the chief aide to the UN's Secretary General Douglas Thomas (Donald Sutherland).

In New York City, China's ambassador Wu (James Hong) and business tycoon David Chan (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) are targeted by an assassin in a conspiracy to derail a major trade agreement. Shaw finds himself falsely implicated as the trigger man, with the FBI's Frank Capella (Maury Chaykin) hot on his trail. Shaw teams up with interpreter Julia Fang (Marie Matiko) to uncover the real conspirators and clear his name.

Despite ambitions to weave the philosophy of Sun Tzu's titular text into the narrative, The Art Of War is an unimaginative thriller crammed with numbingly repetitive stunts unimaginatively mounted by director Christian Duguay, and hobbled by an almost impossible-to-follow plot courtesy of co-writers Wayne Beach and Simon Barry. Characters are barely introduced before being summarily slayed by faceless villains, and the action gallops from one unexplained set piece to another without pause. And of course the conspirators reveal their plans at inopportune moments and are suddenly incompetent at killing just when it matters most. 

Wesley Snipes has enough charisma to cut through the action and almost saves a few moments, but he too is comprehensively defeated by the weak material. All of which is unfortunate, because notwithstanding the bewildering decision to fictitiously expand the UN's mandate to include trade negotiations, conflicts sparked by the power shifts of international commerce should contain the seeds of a worthwhile cerebral thriller. 

The Art Of War pretends to venture into new and profound terrain, but remains trapped in a tired and familiar patch.



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Movie Review: White Men Can't Jump (1992)

A basketball buddy movie, White Men Can't Jump features energetic streetball action but precious little else.

Basketball hustler Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson) arrives in Los Angeles and heads to the Venice Beach outdoor courts. Billy uses his whiteness to fool other players into thinking he is useless, and he quickly gets the better of local showboater Syd Deane (Wesley Snipes).

But Billy is incompetent at managing money, and owes several thousand dollars to loan sharks. His girlfriend Gloria (Rosie Perez) can't keep him from losing whatever money they save. Syd suggests they team up to hustle larger amounts from the tougher parts of town, and they also enter an upcoming 2v2 tournament. The two men have to guard against each other and maintain a spiky camaraderie on and off the courts, always testing the limits of their evolving friendship.

Close to two hours of repetitive trash-talking gets tiresome, but writer-director Ron Shelton persists. White Men Can't Jump is a street level sports comedy-drama idea waiting for a plot, and offers little beyond the most basic buddy movie structure and familiar sports hustle cliches. The loan shark subplot is flimsy enough to blow away in the ocean breeze, and late-in-the-day dramas involving Gloria getting her shot on Jeopardy and a sudden crisis forcing Billy to choose between Syd and Gloria appear tacked to prolong the running time.

And so endless scenes showcase basketball players insulting each other and each other's mothers in a foul-mouthed extravaganza. The ear-to-the-ground banter initially registers as gritty, but the ideas quickly run out. Shelton has to lean heavily on stars Harrelson and Snipes, and they do their best to inject life into the off-the-court scenes. But the friendship between the two men remains stalled in macho needling and juvenile one-upmanship, men behaving like boys and wondering why their women are exasperated.

When everyone shuts up and plays basketball Shelton finally finds some beauty within the urban decay, slow-motion used to good effect to highlight slick moves and bodies in elegant motion. White men may or may not be able to jump, but men and women of all colours can make better movies than this.



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Movie Review: Money Train (1995)

A buddy cops action thriller, Money Train is overcooked and underwhelming.

John (Wesley Snipes) and Charlie (Woody Harrelson) are bickering foster brothers who both work as undercover cops for the New York City transit authority. John is confident and has his life in order. Charlie is a free spirit, always in trouble and depends on John to bail him out. They both manage to infuriate railway operations chief Donald Patterson (Robert Blake). And when fellow officer Grace (Jennifer Lopez) joins their enforcement unit, both brothers decide to romantically pursue her.

Charlie runs afoul of poker game loan sharks and finds himself $15,000 in debt. Grace becomes a wedge between the brothers, and John grows tired of saving Charlie from himself. Meanwhile a psychotic arsonist known only as Torch (Chris Cooper) is on the loose in the subway. With the world closing in on him Charlie begins to dream of hijacking the nightly money train that collects the system's fare revenue.

Directed by Joseph Ruben, Money Train is bloated yet empty. Despite decent production values, everything here is heightened to childhood levels of exaggeration. The action scenes involving Torch and the climactic train heist are wildly over-the-top, defying all laws of logic and physics. The villainy of Patterson reaches caricature levels, the bickering between the brothers is contrived, and the three-way lust triggered by Grace splatters all over the screen, based on nothing more than one woman arriving to work alongside two men.

After the success of 1992's White Men Can't Jump, this was an attempt to nurture the on-screen buddy chemistry between Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. The screenplay by Doug Richardson and David Loughery overplays its hands and asks too much of the actors. John and Charlie engage in scene after scene of predictable verbal sparring lacking in wit and originality, and it all grows tired and old very quickly.

And when it comes to the action set-pieces, Ruben appears oblivious that more can be less, and much more disintegrates into nothingness. Bodies are summarily dangled off high rises, bullets fly on passenger-filled subway platforms, and in the name of seeking the next cheap on-screen thrill, every safety protocol is broken by cops who should know better. And when the climax arrives, Charlie's hairbrained idea to hijack a highly secured train is a most unconvincing screen heist in both planning (none to speak of) and rational cinematic execution (botched).

Money Train superficially looks good and makes decent use of elaborate sets recreating the New York subway system. But this is an otherwise bumbled movie, a child's clumsy fist rummaging through what could have been an elegant train set.

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Movie Review: Wildcats (1986)

A sports comedy, Wildcats is stunningly predictable. But the underdog theme combined with the women's empowerment message contains enough rude energy to make the film tolerable.

In Chicago, Molly McGrath (Goldie Hawn) grew up in a football household and always wanted to coach. Now a divorced mother of two girls and an athletics coach at Prescott high school, she makes a case to fill the vacant junior varsity football coach position but is mocked and blocked by senior coach Dan Darwell (Bruce McGill). Instead she accepts the challenge to coach the senior boys football team at the tough inner-city Central High School. The principal Ben Edwards (Nipsey Russell) is willing to take a chance on Molly because no one else wants the position.

She encounters fierce the resistance from the team members, including Trumaine (Wesley Snipes) and Krushinski (Woody Harrelson) before earning their respect and setting out to turn the perennial losers into a functioning team. Her prospects improve when she convinces quarterback Levander "Bird" Williams (Mykelti Williamson) to turn his back on a life of crime and return to the team. But on the home front things are not going well, with ex-husband Frank (James Keach) claiming that Molly's new job is a bad influence on their daughters and seeking full custody.

Directed by Michael Ritchie, Wildcats has enough talent on both sides of the camera to pull itself into respectability. The story of a team of multi-ethnic misfits coming good fully buys into the White Savior trope, and Molly's ability to transform losers into perpetual winners within a few short weeks is nothing short of remarkable. But Wildcats also contains an edge in its fearless deployment of adult-language, and the script by Ezra Sacks insists on investing time exploring the price ambitious women have to pay at home and at work.

The scenes of domestic turmoil are clunky but do add texture to the film's message. Juggling a demanding new job with household single-mom duties stretches Molly to her limit, exposing her to the risk of losing her daughters. The film brings into sharp contrast the unattainable standards to which women could be held. The invisible barriers between white suburbia and inner city hurt are also revealed: Frank panics at the dangers he perceives everywhere once Molly starts to interact with black and hispanic youth, while Molly's dedication to the family he abandoned is quickly forgotten.

The on-field football action scenes are plentiful and patchy. Ritchie sometimes succeeds in creating fluid sports movement, but just as frequently plays it for plastic laughs in obviously staged sequences. Meanwhile the script abandons any pretense of aiming for a family-friendly audience. The language is raunchy and includes several jarring foul-mouthed zingers.

Goldie Hawn, near the peak of her career, brings her megawatt personality to the film and frequently lights up the screen. She combines her spunky persona with a determination to succeed and to break the victim pattern of her life, and pulls it off with ease. While most of the rest of the lead roles are at the television level, Wildcats features a telling performance from comedian Nipsey Russell, the debuts of Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes, and an early role for Mykelti Williamson.

Wildcats is far from throwing a touchdown, but does pick up good yards here and there.

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Movie Review: To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)

A culture clash comedy drama, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar goes for road trip laughs but rarely shifts out of neutral and runs out of gas early.

In New York City drag queens Noxeema Jackson (Wesley Snipes) and Vida Boheme (Patrick Swayze) are declared joint winners of a beauty contest. Their prize is a trip to Hollywood to compete in a national event. Before they depart Vida takes pity on Chi-Chi Rodriguez (John Leguizamo), a less confidant contestant, and the trio buy an old Cadillac and embark on a cross-country road trip. On the backroads of the hinterlands they tangle with bigoted Sheriff Dollard (Chris Penn) before their car breaks down and they are rescued by Bobby Ray (Jason London), a young man who provides a ride to his tiny community of Snydersville.

As they await car repairs, they get to know the locals, including innkeeper Carol Ann (Stockard Channing), who is suffering abuse by her husband Virgil (Arliss Howard), a mechanic and tow truck driver. Meanwhile a group of thuggish men threaten to rape Chi-Chi, who falls in love with Bobby Ray. The drag queens do what they can to help the community, including working with Beatrice (Blythe Danner) and other women to organize the annual Strawberry Social event.

Directed by Beeban Kidron and written by Douglas Beane, To Wong Foo must have looked good on paper: transform three macho male movie stars covering three ethnicities into drag queens, stuff them into a car and wait for riotous laughs to ensue. It never really works. While the costumes and makeup are brilliant and the men do their part in the acting department, the script is a limp exercise in contrived situations drawing on basic stereotypes exploiting the urban-rural divide.

With weak character development and the flimsiest of backgrounds afforded to Noxeema, Vida and Chi-Chi, the film defaults to a rather condescending story of three sophisticated urbanites invading a backwards rural community to make it better. Everything about Snydersville is in need of rescue, from spousal abuse to several sub-plots of awkward or unrequited love, plus the old lady who is thought to be mute but really just needs someone to talk to about old movies. And they are all threatened by the seemingly parentless local sneering hoodlums who have nothing else to do except rape and pillage.

Of course none of the locals are smart enough to notice that Noxeema, Vida and Chi-Chi are guys in women's clothing, and the drag queens set about to make everything better, because they know best how to fix all that ails small town USA. Once the film falls into the trap of its own making there is nothing to do except tediously await the obvious climax featuring the awakening of the great unwashed among the ramshackle structures that pass for a town.

Despite the weak material Swayze and Leguizamo do a fine job as drag queens. Snipes is over the top both in terms of looks and behaviour, his Noxeema Jackson reduced for long stretches to sideline quips. Robin Williams contributes an uncredited single-scene appearance.

The movie's title is derived from a signed memorabilia photo of actress Julie Newmar. The photo, the signature and the title have next to nothing to do with the film other than add to the general sense of clumsiness. To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar gets the fashion right, but everything else is a shambles.

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The Movies Of Wesley Snipes (1995)

All movies starring Wesley Snipes and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Wildcats (1986)

King Of New York (1990)

White Men Can't Jump (1992)

Passenger 57 (1992)

Rising Sun (1993)

Demolition Man (1993)

To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)

Money Train (1995)

Murder At 1600 (1997)

U.S. Marshals (1998)

The Art Of War (2000)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Rising Sun (1993)

A disorganized murder thriller, Rising Sun attempts to inject cross-cultural corporate commentary into the story of a sordid death that occurs during a boardroom sex session. The result is a high quality but rather convoluted mess.

In Los Angeles, a large Japanese corporation is negotiating the takeover of a US tech company. The deal has political ramifications and Senator John Morton (Ray Wise) comes out strongly in opposition. During a lavish corporate reception hosted by the Japanese, escort girl Cheryl Austin (Tatjana Patitz) ends us dead after having kinky sex with an unidentified man on the boardroom table. Cheryl was the girlfriend-of-sorts of Eddie Sakamura (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), the son of one of the senior Japanese tycoons involved in the negotiations.

Lieutenant Web Smith (Wesley Snipes), a police liaison for foreign dignitaries, and Captain John Connor (Sean Connery), an expert in Japanese culture, are called in to help Lieutenant Tom Graham (Harvey Keitel) investigate the death. Web and John soon obtain a surveillance disc recording of Cheryl's death, and the visual evidence appears to implicate Eddie. But John senses a greater conspiracy, and recruits tech geek Jingo Asakuma (Tia Carrere) to prove that the disc has been altered. Eddie anyway finds himself on the run, while John and Web uncover a dense plot involving an internal power struggle and an attempt to influence the high-stakes negotiations.

An adaptation of the Michael Crichton book directed by Philip Kaufman, Rising Sun looks good and features watchable stars delivering smooth performances. Sean Connery as a detective who marches to his own drum with a deep appreciation for all things Japanese immediately elevates the proceedings, while Wesley Snipes, Harvey Keitel and Tia Carrere are never less than dependable. Plenty of rain and a glistening nighttime Los Angeles add an attractive aesthetic.

But as a plot, the film unravel rather quickly, and thanks to a flabby script it loses focus with remarkable ease. A lot of what may have worked as a book does not connect on the screen, and Kaufman is never able to find a human hook to any of the sprawling plot elements. Overlong at 125 minutes, the film starts turning in circles and as more of the conspiracy is revealed, less of it makes sense. Entire sub-plots are unnecessarily introduced and abandoned, including Steve Buscemi showing up late as a reporter delving into Web's past, and disappearing just as abruptly. By the end, minor characters come to the fore with no explanation, most of the loose threads are left dangling, a few Yakuza types show up to settle scores, and everyone goes back to work.

There are a few most unconvincing attempts to give Web a family life, while very little is known about John Connor. Kaufman inserts plenty of dialogue about the differences between Japanese and US culture, often intercut with scenes of misery on LA streets. While there is thoughtful material about the various forms of racism and observations on east meeting west, it's only the Americans who provide commentary. In a film purportedly about two cultures, all the Japanese remain poorly defined as stock characters.

Part buddy movie, part us-versus-them, part murder mystery laced with titillating sex, part corporate intrigue, and part Yakuza action thriller, Rising Sun throws everything at the well. Some of it sticks, but not much of it rises.

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Movie Review: King Of New York (1990)

A stylishly gloomy crime drama, King Of New York layers on the artsy violence but leaves behind any reason to care about its principal characters.

Crime lord Frank White (Christopher Walken) is released from prison and immediately heads back to New York to regain control of his empire. His gang members, led by Jimmy Jump (Laurence Fishburne), pave the way for Frank's return by killing rival gang leaders El Zapa and King Tito, the former in a phone booth outside a high class brothel, the latter in a hotel room.

Frank then applies pressure on Mafia boss Arty Clay and Triad leader Larry Wong, demanding a cut of their business. Clay refuses to cooperate, and Wong attempts to negotiate. Both pay a heavy price for failing to comply with Frank's wishes.With Frank's lawyer Jennifer (Janet Julian) keeping him and his men beyond the reach of the courts, police detectives Bishop (Victor Argo), Gilley (David Caruso) and Flanigan (Wesley Snipes) grow increasingly frustrated. Gilley advocates going outside the law to deal with Frank, adding fuel to the wave of violence sweeping across the city.

An independent production directed by Abel Ferrara with an emphasis on wild action set-pieces, King Of New York packs plenty of intense shoot-outs, chases, and general scenes of carnage and violence into a relatively short 106 minutes of running time. This is a film that transforms New York into a war zone where hundreds of bullet rounds are sprayed around on a nightly basis, as gangsters kill each other with savagery driven by hatred and the imperative need to control the drug trade.

Ferrara delivers all the brutality with an eye on moody and stylish packaging, the action often happening at night, the gangsters largely emotionless as they kill to the beat of rap music and under the toxic influence of drugs, with random gyrating women always within reach.

It's all wildly entertaining but also not even remotely realistic, and as an exercise in sleek crime depiction King Of New York is hampered by an almost complete absence of character introduction or development. Frank White remains an almost robotic blank slate, save for one quite unconvincing late speech about his criminality being less criminal than his rivals. A half-baked sub-plot about Frank channeling funds to an inner-city hospital project holds promise but is underdeveloped.

The secondary characters fare worse, and next to nothing is known about all the other crime bosses and the three police detectives. But Laurence (billed as Larry) Fishburne does get to let loose in a pretty insane depiction of the trigger-happy Jimmy Jump, a man so far gone on the culture of drugs and violence that he is actually enjoying the madness that comes with hurtling towards oblivion.

King Of New York dances to the beat of anarchic artistry, but beyond all the bloodshed the king has few other clothes on.

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Movie Review: Murder At 1600 (1997)

A routine thriller with a single new idea, Murder At 1600 cannot overcome an unfortunate regression to the most basic and predictable elements of the genre.

With the United States embroiled in a tense stand-off over US servicemen held hostage by North Korea, young secretary Carla Town is found murdered in a White House bathroom (address: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). Detective Harlan Regis (Wesley Snipes) is assigned to the case, and although Secret Service Director Nick Spikings (Daniel Benzali) wants no outside investigation, National Security Advisor Alvin Jordan (Alan Alda) is interested in what Regis may come up with. Secret Service agent Nina Chance (Diane Lane) is assigned to ostensibly help Regis, although her role is really to spy on him on behalf of Spikings.

When Regis and Nina uncover proof that Spikings is framing a lowly White House janitor for the murder in order to sweep the whole affair under the carpet and protect President Jack Neil (Ronny Cox), they team up to chase after the truth. They discover a sordid link between Carla and the President's son Kyle Neil (Tate Donovan), and the more they investigate, the more they become targets of harassment, threats and finally hit squads.

While the premise of a dead body stuffed into a White House toilet cubicle carries a punch, and television director Dwight H. Little infuses a decent amount of style particularly early on,  Murder At 1600 quickly runs out of ideas. All too predictably, the rudimentary script defaults to a series of chase-and-hide-and flee-and-shoot scenes, as Regis and Nina become targets of assassins running roughshod over Washington DC.

The movie suffers from the common cheap thriller disease where the original murder is followed by several more brazen crimes, none of which attract any attention from the media or the appropriate authorities. Here there is a wild shoot-out in a tony residential neighbourhood that ends with a senior member of the White House team very dead, but that incident is somehow missed as an investigation-worthy event.

The resolution of Murder At 1600 is also limp, a contrived blackmail plot that only works at the juvenile level, and an interminable White House infiltration through underground tunnels that all too conveniently ends in the hallway where the President just happens to be walking through.

The exterior DC locations are attractive, although the interiors were shot in replica rooms built in Toronto. Wesley Snipes and Diane Lane do the best that they can with the material, both leaning heavily on their charisma to overcome the inherent outlandishness surrounding them. Snipes puts on his streetwise persona and gets to deliver a few cool lines, while Lane improves once she lets her hair down and decides to join the action, plausibility be damned. Daniel Benzali is too obviously crotchety, while Alan Alda provides a welcome level of quality to the supporting cast. Funnyman Dennis Miller is unconvincing as Snipes' fellow cop.

Murder At 1600 has a prestigious address, but a botched delivery.

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