Crime na Casa Branca

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.

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.

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.

When it comes to thrillers I usually find that smaller is better. I almost always enjoy the small independent films with the second- and third-levels stars rather than the big Hollywood productions made with the A-team that cater to a broader public taste. But when your thriller is set at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the District of Columbia, it's awfully hard for a low-budget production to pull it off credibly. Besides, I'm interested in the presidency and like films that purport to give you a behind-the-scenes look, even if it is fictional, so I gave 'Murder at 1600' a chance.

Of course, if the movie is going to be longer than 15 minutes, you have to allow it some license. A lot of its success is based on how much you're willing to let go without saying, "Wait a minute!" A lot, too, depends on the cast and Wesley Snipes is a likable enough actor. Diane Lane is a big plus here as the Secret Service agent who works with him. They have a typical rocky relationship, but it's enjoyable. Daniel Benzali is ominous as the head of Secret Service. Snipes asks him what it would take for him to see some White House records and Benzali dryly answers, "Oh, not much. Just an act of Congress." Other veterans in the cast include Alan Alda, Ronny Cox and Harris Yulin. Bigger wasn't necessarily better this time but it was good enough.

Wesley Snipes is his reliably charismatic self in this average crime thriller set around a murder in the White House. I feel like this had more potential, but unfortunately it settles for being being just okay. It has its moments, but is for the most part a pretty cliched and formulaic thriller.