I saw this a VERY long time ago, when Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant were cresting on their mid-1990s power couple wave (and just before Hugh became unstuck in his personal life) after the impact of 'Four Weddings' and a certain Versace dress. Liz suffered her share indignities for this movie, appearing topless on the side of VHS box for one (!), as well as being catapulted into the pages of numerous 'lads mags' on the strength of it, but it was their breakthrough that ensured that this otherwise long forgotten project had any sort of profile at all.
I'd like to think that somewhere the one shot writer may have had in mind some kind of romance - crime drama like 'Mona Lisa' but the screenplay is a shouty , incomprehensible mess of coincidences, contrivences and craziness. Most of the characters are unlikeable, although given that most are upper class junkies that should come as no surprise.
Yes, Liz is in sparklingly wooden form for a long term drug abuser but I'd argue that Elizabeth Taylor in her prime would have had an uphill battle with this material. That even the great Joss Ackland and C Thomas Howell struggle to deliver acceptable performances suggests that Hurley was perhaps being judged perhaps a little too harshly.
Only Jeremy Brett, the quintessential Sherlock Holmes, and a fine classical actor in his own right, soars far above the swamp of mediocrity. That he and Ackland both disassociated themselves from what would be Brett's final movie is a sad testament to a performer who undoubtably deserved a better epithet.
Mind you, it's always worth remembering that this is how fame was often achieved in the days of pre-social media and instant successes - a long apprenticeship of hard graft, obscurity and appearances clunkers like this.
