Murder at 1600

MURDER AT 1600 came near the end of Wesley Snipes' theatrical career, before he went STV, and it is a decent-enough, Canadian-lensed thriller about the discovery of a young woman's brutally murdered body in the White House. Could the president's bully of a son (Tate Donovan) have killed her? Or are there more sinister forces at work here? For better or worse, the identity of the killer is made plain just past the halfway mark. But that doesn't mean you can't go along for the ride as shadowy assassins try to keep Snipes, as a D.C. detective, and Diane Lane, as a sympathetic Secret Service agent, from uncovering the truth. Snipes is in tip top shape here and is surrounded by several great character actors: Ronny Cox as the president, Harris Yulin as a hawkish general and Alan Alda as a presidential adviser. Daniel Benzali, who some of you might remember from a short-lived TV crime show some years ago, is on hand as a senior Secret Service agent and Dennis Miller has a small role as a fellow D.C. detective. While MURDER AT 1600 is not a first-rate action film -- for one thing, it is chock full of tired plot devices -- it is certainly watchable. And it beats anything Snipes has done since going STV.

I like Wesley Snipes in just about everything he has been in. I am not talking Academy Award stuff here, but just enjoyable action fare that will pass the time without making you groan.

New Jack City, Passenger 57, Rising Sun, Demolition Man, Blade I, II, III, U.S. Marshalls, and this one all provide action and entertainment. That's what we watch movies for, isn't it? The story about a conspiracy to get rid of a President (Ronnie Cox) who is not a right-wing nut job like Alan Alda is interesting, and there are interesting characters along the way like Diane Lane (Unfaithful, The Perfect Storm), Daniel Benzali ("Murder One"), and Dennis Miller (Bordello of Blood).

You won't go wrong here as Snipes shows the best character yet.

Murder at 1600 is playing with a lot of familiar tropes from action-thrillers of the late 90s, and I don't mind one bit. This was the kind of stuff I loved when I was just getting into action films, and I still find such joy from watching them now. Sure, there is a formula at play here, and there are often things that don't make a ton of sense. In fact, more than once my logical brain would think "that's not how that would really happen," but I was able to get over the nonsense and enjoy the ride. It's fun to think of the different ways that an investigation might be influenced by federal agencies if there was a chance it could incriminate certain people in power. I like that they bring in an unbiased homicide detective to oversee the case, and we get to see how he is manipulated by the system. It gives a nice David-vs-Goliath feel to the case and makes the tension greater. They also put plenty of bureaucratic roadblocks in the way that help intensify the drama.

I love Wesley Snipes in this role, because I often forget he is so charming. Some of the character stuff they give him doesn't work well, and seems tacked on for no good reason, but I still like him as the lead. It's also hard to criticize anything that Diane Lane does in the supporting role. She plays a character who is tough as nails, one who holds her own with all the men around her, and never once does she feel like a lame damsel in distress that our hero has to save. The mystery in Murder at 1600 is not bad at all, because we are tricked into suspecting a number of different people. However, it's not exactly one where we are given all the important evidence up front so we can deduce the truth before it is revealed. But just like the far-fetched nature of certain things that happen in Murder at 1600, I simply don't care about that. I have a fun time watching it, and that's really all that matters to me.

Murder at 1600 is an OK thriller film. The cast all does a pretty good job, especially Diane lane and Wesley snipes. Alan Alda also does a good sufficient job at portraying his role. The dialogue between characters is alright at best, nothing great, but nothing terrible either. The film does at least keep you guessing for the majority of the runtime. The mystery kinda builds as it goes, which is always fun. The mystery isn't the greatest one ever to be in a movie, but it is interesting to see how it all comes and works together to see who is behind everything and why in the end. The action scenes (shooting, punching, etc.) were pretty fun of the mill action sequences. That's not bad necessarily, just would've liked to have seen something a little different from the usual. 6/10 overall.

At least the whodunit puzzle left me guessing. But that's the only redeeming quality of this pretentious mystery, set at the White House. A lone, good guy cop (played by Wesley Snipes) goes up against the rich and powerful. Our hero fights the bullies and the bad guys with courage and daring. It's a tired, stale concept.

The story is chock-full of pretentious, self-important, irritatingly hip characters, most of them conveniently photogenic. The plot contains lots of chases and some fight scenes. It also contains the obligatory in-your-face news media frenzy, and other tiresome film clichés. The dialogue is banal. Example: "Section 6 secure"; "Go. Freeze!". The film's ending is unimaginative and trite.

Color cinematography is adequate, if conventional. Production design is detailed and quite convincing. Acting is average. The nondescript background music is very manipulative.

"Murder At 1600" comes across as your typical big-budget, high profile film right off the Hollywood assembly line. It's got visual pizazz and lots of "action". But the story lacks substance and depth, the characters are stereotyped, and the dialogue is vapid. It's just one more example of how Hollywood throws production megabucks as substandard screenplays.