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One distinguishing feature of this series is its ease with which it shifts from morally complex middle-weight drama to near-farce. Following an episode in which Brenda's manipulations amount to a betrayal of her lover, this one shouts "comedy" from the first appearance of guest-actor Jennifer Coolidge, whose ingenious work playing birdbrains has put her into the category of C. Walken comic eccentricity. The whole cast seems attuned to this alteration of styles: they go both-ways with smiling grace. Arvin Brown, who directed this episode, ran New Haven's Long Wharf Theater for many years-- Eugene O'Neill, Gorky, Fugard-- and I hope he enjoyed staging this romp.

At the time of its release, early in Hurt's period of greatest exposure, and directly following the directing/writing team's BREAKING AWAY, this film was regarded as a disappointment and is not much mentioned now. But the cast-list all by itself is a triumph-- I can't think of a mainstream film that showcases so many wonderful actors. As the family Hurt almost marries into, James Woods and two terrific stage actors, Pamela Reed and Kenneth McMillan, each with a showpiece scene (watch Reed's warmth on realizing she won't have to go through with a marriage she doesn't want). McMillan, the greatest modern American Falstaff prior to Kevin Kline, deserves a cult beyond his DUNE maleficence. As aristos with guns, Christopher Plummer and brilliant Irene Worth are less distinctively scripted but bring class to class-hatred roles. And in the margins, the two best actors ever to share the front-seat of a police car, Morgan Freeman and Steven Hill. Acting teachers should run this film as class text.

A long film that grows stronger in its last hour. After some initial disappointment at what seemed a conventional city/rural conflict in police-work, I was surprised by the power of what emerges by the end-- enough so that I looked through the extended cast-interviews included on the domestic DVD. Someone who likes the film will be interested in the interview with the actor playing the second suspect: the film is apparently developed from a successful Seoul stageplay, in which he played all three suspects. Fragments of videotaped stage-performance shows him with very different affect-- and you realize the obsessive, haunted conclusion of the film indicates its open-case presence in South Korea's collective awareness.