A Slight Case of Murder

William H. Macy is brilliant as Everyman caught in a desperate situation. Starts off with a bang and never lets up. Twists and surprises are fresh, unpredictable. Use of film noir clips and frequent quotes and references to 30's and 40's flicks makes this a delightful "must" for movie buffs.

Co-scripted by William H. Macy from, arguably, Donald E. Westlake's best and hardest to find novel, "A Travesty". *Very* faithful to the story, the movie stars Macy as a hapless man who gets in way too far over his head after attempting to cover up an accidental death. Costars Adam Arkin and James Cromwell in good supporting roles. The strength of the movie is in the intricate twist-after-twist storyline and in the acting, particularly by Macy who routinely and delightfully breaks through the 4th wall here and gets away with it every time. A good storyline with much dark humor, this one engaged me enough that I've watched it three times in the week since it came out. Prepare to shelve your critical faculties and emit a loud, bipartisan "wheeeeee!".

It is probably the reductio ad absurdum of the self-conscious neo-noir that its ultimate hero/villain/victim should be a film critic, about as far removed from the original prole/lower-middle-class noir heroes (e.g. 'The Postman Always Rings Twice', 'Double Indemnity') as you could get. Faced with a crisis, Terry Thorpe turns it into a screenplay, a fiction. And this is what saves the film from smart-alecky ghastliness - it is a film about mid-life crisis, the flaws and difficulties of the modern affluent, middle-aged man. it seems like noir can still speak for people rather than to itself, but this often palls - the best joke is a corpse called Laura who doesn't get up.

William Macy is perfect in this unique contemporary film noir. The look is 40's although its not really a period piece. The interaction of Adam Arkin and Macy is electric, with multiple cat and mouse games being played.

This movie raises the bar in TV movies, and is an intelligent entertainment with an unguessable ending.

Loved it.

Okay, I love Bill Macy, who's invariably fun to watch, with those pouchy eyes and that "please don't kick me again" expression-- or maybe it's "please don't kick me again so hard." And I love Donald Westlake, one of the best writers of light capers on the scene today. Westlake wrote the novel on which this is based, which I seem to recall reading as "Enough," not "A Travesty," which is what it says in the credits. The combination of these two guys is inspired, all the better in that Macy co-wrote the adaptation and tailored the lead precisely to his acting strengths. Macy just looks like a typical Westlake hero-- only, as one of the other characters points out, he really can't be the hero if he's killed his girlfriend, even accidentally. And he's not really the hero, I guess, although you do sort of root for him. Macy plays Jerry Thorpe, a not-very-nice TV film critic, whose attempts to evade the consequences of committing an accidental murder get more and more involved as the plot thickens. It's an anti-Columbo, where we follow the criminal, not the cop, and wonder when and how he's going to blow it. Macy's stayed true to the book, adding a lot of character touches and a couple of nifty flourishes. He even includes a funny reference to one of his own previous pictures, "Searching for Bobby Fischer." I guess, for me, the fun was just watching Macy have so much fun in a leading role-- like Steve Buscemi, he's a terrific character actor who rarely gets the chance to carry a film. He carries this one, and I hope to see him carry more.