Le coupable

The actors do everything they can to pull together a script that has so many implausible coincidences to be ridiculous. Let's put all of that aside and just enjoy some of the excellent acting by Anwar and most of the supporting cast. Pullman is always solid. But what really ruins this film is the last 15 minutes where stupid goes to a whole new level just to reach the goal line set by whomever was rsponsible for the script.

This was a sleeper, a no-name movie that might have gone straight-to-video and was pretty good. It's one of these crime movies that doesn't have a lot of action yet keeps your interest all the way through.

Like a true film noir, none of the characters nor their morality in this are really good but what WAS good was a few things at the end of this story you rarely see in a Hollywood film.

Bill Pullman, Devon Sawa, Gabrielle Anwar, Angela Featherstone and Joanne Whalley (Kilmer) make for a diverse cast of actors. This is worth a look if you can find it anywhere but not that good to go searching for it.

It is funny how much Pullman and Sawa resemble each other, and that Pullman's character seems to feel it when they first meet. However...

Plot wise, it's a trash fire, but there is very solid acting here, and the directing may not quite be memorable, but it also is solid enough to make this a picture worth watching.

But it does require truly monumental stupidity for some of the "twists" to occur.

One rainy day while searching the video store my boyfriend and I came across this movie. Bill Pullman was on the cover so we hired it without reading the back of the cover and we were pleasantly surprised.

It was strange seeing Bill Pullman as the bad guy. He's certainly an underrated actor and this movie works only because of him.

Gabrielle Anwar was dull in her performance but Devon Sawa was great.

Bill Pullman plays a lawyer about to become a judge who tries to seduce his secretary, Gabrielle Anwar. She threatens to blackmail him and he hires Sawa to kill her but there are a few twists involved.

All in all this isn't a bad movie to watch and even though his performance was good, after being the nice guy for so long you have trouble believing Bill Pullman as a baddie.

This is a flawed film, not flawed creatively, but in its sidestepping of consumerism. We, collectively, have been taught to expect certain things from movies and those things are attributes that make box office. That isn't necessarily stuff that makes good stories. This movie deviates, I think, from formula in one pivotal and disturbing scene. It doesn't give us what we've come to expect, it gives us something else, much as the movie "The Pledge" did, which also trashed its chances at the box office. But if you don't demand the "norm" in your films, this is a complicated and delightfully twisting tale of indulgence and getting accidentally swept up in things we had no intention of messing with. Personally, I found what has been called weak performances as low keyed and powerful and I had fun letting Bill Pullman do something ... well, sinister. It isn't a great film, it's for buffs who like something oddball to carry in their knapsack of cinematic experiences. It ain't for everyone, but for those it's for, it's a treat. On its most basic level, it's about a powerful man who, in aggresive drunkeness, rapes a nearly willing secretary and wants her to forget about it because of his career. On the other level, it's about what goes around doing its thing. Newton's Law. And you know laws, we will abide by them.