Killing Blue

This is the story of a police inspector who is carrying the weight of inadvertently injuring a little girl in the process of apprehending a drug dealer. A young woman is killed. He gets together with a prostitute in order to get more information and pursue the evildoer. In the process there is a series of encounters with Morgan Fairchild. It's all eye candy and voyeurism. There is little to recommend this movie. It is frenetic and wanders around all over the place. Of course, Morgan Fairchild, being the great Shakespearean actress that she is, puts forth a masterful performance. Armin Mueller-Stah, a German actor, and Michael York don't fair much better in their roles. It just didn't seem like it was worth the time.

I mean really! What are you people thinking? What did you watch that I didn't? 3.9 STARS?!?!? What I saw was a movie with no clear definition of characters, no actual exposition of the plot, horrible editing, inappropriate sight gags that should have been on the "blooper reel", and some godawful acting. How can you possibly assign a positive integer to this film?

I'm sure I must have seen a worse movie (though nothing comes to mind right now), but I've never seen a movie that was a bigger waste of talent. The script is barely coherent -- it's difficult to tell what relationship the characters have to one another -- and the director seems to have absent from the set for most of the filming. Put Armin Mueller-Stahl, Michael York and Monika Bleibtreu together and you could have an award-winning production. Instead we have ...well, let's be charitable and say that a couple of times Mueller-Stahl manages to break away from the truly awful writing and make Inspector Alex Glass into a *two-dimensional* character. Nobody else can even get past one. Yes, it really IS that bad.

"Inspector Alex Glass" (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is in charge of an investigation into the murder of several young women and the only suspect he has so far is a drug-dealer named "Jack Miskowski" (Frank Stallone). But Jack Miskowski is a hard man to find so in order to apprehend him Alex has to dig deep into the shady nightlife of Berlin. It's here that he meets a beautiful prostitute name "Lisa" (Morgan Fairchild) and falls in love with her. What he doesn't realize is that Lisa has a connection to Jack Miskowski and the deeper the investigation takes him the more dangerous it is to her. Now rather than reveal any more of the plot and risk ruining it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this movie starts off in a rather confusing manner. Throw in the murky scenery and weak character development and it gets even more bewildering. Even so I liked the sardonic wit of Armin Mueller-Stahl who managed to keep things interesting. Likewise, Morgan Fairchild looked quite fabulous as well. All things considered then I rate this movie as about average.

An aging, cynical detective in dreary Berlin (Armin Mueller-Stahl) investigates the murder of a young woman while dealing with a new female partner who hasn't lost sight of virtue (Julia Kent). Michael York plays the DA, Frank Stallone a pusher and Morgan Fairchild a hooker.

"Midnight Cop" (1988), aka "Killing Blue," is a dreary big city detective drama/thriller with enough entertaining aspects to make it worthwhile for those interested, but it's horribly marred by awkward editing. I don't know if the jerky pacing was a Euro thang at the time or the filmmakers were trying to be avant-garde (or perhaps it's just incompetence?). But, if you can acclimate, there are several highlights, including the winsome Julia Kent and the stunning Morgan Fairchild, not to mention a couple of other beauties. Meanwhile, the jazzy score is interesting with "Whiter Shade of Pale" thrown into the mix. And, despite the darkness, there is some effective humor.

It's basically an 80's Euro meshing of movies like the Dirty Harry flicks, "The Organization" (1971), "Death Wish" (1974) and "Lantana" (2001), just lacking their editing smoothness. I advise using the subtitles since the mumbled dialogue is often hard to make out (especially by Mueller-Stahl). Speaking of which, although the characters speak English (some of it obviously dubbed), you're supposed to imagine they're speaking German.

The film runs 1 hour, 35-40 minutes, and was shot in West Berlin, Germany, but don't expect any beautiful shots of the city as the urban photography is always dark, grey, industrial and unappealing, which fits the mood of course.

GRADE: C+/B-