The Heart of Justice

Wow, "The Heart of Justice" has quite an impressively stellar cast for being such an inconspicuous and little-seen made-for-TV thriller from the early 90s. My personal reason for absolutely wanting to track it down was because it features the very last role of the greatest actor who ever lived - Vincent Price - but the rest of the list is dazzling as well. Dennis Hopper, Bradford Dillman, Jennifer Connelly, Eric Stoltz, Harris Yulin, William H. Macy, Joanna Miles, Kurt Fuller... Based on these names, one might think it must be a sort of masterpiece, but not quite. Although a fairly engaging and entertaining thriller/mystery while it lasts, "The Heart of Justice" isn't highly memorable.

The film does open intriguingly, with Vincent Price's magical voice as he's talking to Dennis Hopper over dinner. The latter depicts Austin Blair, a cocky pulp novelist enjoying the success and media attention of his newly published book. When he walks out of the club's restaurant, though, Blair is mercilessly gunned down in broad daylight by an assailant who immediately commits suicide as well. The paper he works for orders the very arrogant reporter David Leader to dive into the story and background of the murderer. He discovers the assailant, Elliot Burgess, comes from a rich and influential family, but struggled with paranoia and mental instability. Elliot read Blair's latest novel and became obsessed with the idea it was based on the lives and secrets of his family. Leader is supposed to write an extended story, but instead he becomes indulged with the murderer's sister Emma, ...and I can't blame him because she's the unearthly ravishing Jennifer Connelly!

The film is enjoyable and compelling to watch, thanks to the solid basic plot and strong performances for every tiniest supportive role, but even the dream cast can't prevent the story from becoming slightly dull and repetitive after a good hour. You will be curious regarding how it will end because, after all, the killer is already identified and dead. I must admit the denouement is unexpected and original, but not entirely satisfying.

Alright, one last homage to Vincent Price. His role is virtually meaningless here, and "The Heart of Justice" is hardly the film to end such a long and brilliant career with, but he still stands proudly and shines in his final role. Two short passages aren't much, but his speech about the rich club members is one of the highlights. I hope Eric Stoltz realizes what a great honor it is to have shared the last on-screen moments of this legendary man.

Half of 'The Heart of Justice' consists of a recurrent series of situations after a crime was committed.

Elliot Burgess (Dermot Mulroney) is an aristocratic youngster from the high society of New York, and he assassins a successful author of bestsellers, Austin Blair (Dennis Hopper), after the old man has been having an affair with his teenage sister, Emma Burgess (Jennifer Connelly), in the exclusive club, where all the Burgesses usually spend their summer.

Particularly, Blair's latest novel blatantly portrays all the Burgess in a satirical way, out of the pillow-talk from such an affair.

There also is incest suggested between both siblings as one of the motivations for the crime.

As usual with the 'Neo Noir' productions, 'The Heart of Justice' is almost flawless technically, exuding all the enthusiasm of a 100-percent American genre in plain Manhattan.

Similarly, the cast is awesome; Connelly perfectly takes up the role of the demolishing 'femme fatale' in this story, in this case being a teenage lady, just coming out from high school. This is HER movie, indubitably.

However, 'The Heart of Justice' skids in its approach to the story; the profile and the demeanor of its characters don't correspond to real 'yuppies' from the 'top of the world'.

The movie also fails managing the series of events; the extensive series of flashbacks usually turn uninteresting and awkward.

The success of the Columbo TV series had to do with the clown side of the weird detective; such a story-spoiler-style wouldn't fit in a 'Noir' (or 'Neo Noir') movie though, always so bleak and intellectual.

1992's "The Heart of Justice" was a prestigious TV movie from Turner Network Television, boasting a solid cast of veterans in mostly brief appearances, led in the opening scene by Dennis Hopper and Vincent Price, two longtime friends enjoying a last luncheon together in their exclusive club before Hopper's Austin Blair is unceremoniously shot to death once he leaves. The assassin is Elliot Burgess (Dermot Mulroney), an introverted violinist who has formed an unusually close bond with gorgeous sister Emma (Jennifer Connelly), one that dirtbag Blair seemingly knows about and has revealed all the skeletons in the Burgess family closet in his latest work of gossip fiction. Hot shot reporter David Leader (Eric Stoltz) is given the green light to compose a series of articles designed to leave the other newspapers envious, using his contacts to dig further into the background of the Burgess patriarch (Bradford Dillman), who always wanted his pampered son to follow in his law practice footsteps. Only after making contact with Emma does David receive a number of cassette tapes narrated by the obviously deranged killer, all spelling out the motives behind the murder, drawn out over several weeks in a coldly calculated style. It doesn't really qualify as a mystery since the crime takes place barely two minutes into the picture (even before the credits roll!), and because the protagonist is a self serving jerk deserving of less pity than even the perpetrator, viewers are left with an exercise of style over substance, less and less involving as the picture drags on toward its painfully obvious conclusion. What one is left with are the little character vignettes, in particular the final screen role for 80 year old Vincent Price (shooting in October 1991), whose Reggie Shaw describes himself as 'a charming old fart' who enjoys time spent with old friends, and whose real life relationship with Dennis Hopper makes their sequence stand out; both had first worked together in 1956 on the Irwin Allen production "The Story of Mankind," and had recently reunited for Hopper's directorial outing "Backtrack" aka "Catchfire" (oddly enough, this would also prove the last feature role for Bradford Dillman, spending his final three decades in blissful retirement).

Very much a TV movie with all the hallmarks to prove it. How a project like this got Dennis Hopper, Jennifer Connelly, Vincent Price & William H. Macy to appear in it is most peculiar. Only Connelly has any real screen time but the movie mostly follows Eric Stoltz as quite possibly one of the most annoyingly grating characters ever put to film. How anyone is meant to root for him the way he treats his girlfriend and colleagues makes no sense. A very forgettable 90s tv movie which should probably be left there.

A writer is murdered out in the open, and the killer then offs himself. The question is what happened? The man he killed wrote something scandalous about his family. The man was ticked off by his latest book. He was so unhinged. His sister was shocked by his behavior. So when he stalked him, he caught the interest in a reporter. So the reporter got closer to his sister.

It's a interesting movie to watch. With an all-star cast to boot. It's like a puzzle game to solve, but it's also a game of cat and mouse. With the puzzle been solved, but the game of cat and mouse results with the mouse getting away.

Eric Stoltz, Jennifer Connelly, William H. Macy makes the movie good. It's a shame that it was Vincent Price's last film.

3 out of 5 stars.