Contre-enquête

The last and least of Sidney Lumet's three stories of (more or less) innocents trying to uncover police corruption and blow the whistle on the guilty, and the only fictional story. There's nothing wrong with the acting of the principals. Nolte is brutish and tall in an over-the-top performance. (He always looks larger on screen than in person.) His New York accent, however, is clearly superimposed on an unregional Omaha set of phonemes. Jenny Lumet looks splendid but has the same problem with her accent, and her scenes are too long as part of a mixed-up romantic subplot that doesn't hold together well. Timothy Hutton has less of a notable problem with his speech, and he is really quite good as the innocent-looking but by no means weak investigating attorney. He even looks pretty Irish. O'Neal is the smoothly villainous and murderous head of the investigation, and a very good villain he is, as usual. Guzman and Dutton provide excellent supporting roles. And Armand Assante seems built for the part of the iron-eating PR drug dealer who has made the decision, a thoroughly rational one, to get out and live in the Caribbean sunshine. His body movements provide a language unto themselves, his smallest gestures are magnetic. They draw so much attention to themselves that they are almost the self-parody that they were in his hilarious spoof of detective movies. He's an exceptional actor.

The movie's plot, however, leaves a good deal to be desired. Its fictional skeleton shows through. You've never seen so much ethnicity on the screen before, and it's misplaced. It's easy enough to believe that racial insults are offhandedly traded among in-group members but difficult to believe that every conversational exchange, no matter how casual or intense, must include one. And at the very time when some of these barriers are beginning to weaken, judging from the rising rates of intermarriage. Serpico's story was relatively simple. Prince of the City far more complex and realistically tragic. This one is simply hard to follow as well as hard to believe. Boats turn into fireballs in unlikely ways, as they do in quickie action movies. Characters fly back and forth from San Juan to New York and some are killed and it's difficult to keep track of what's what and who's who. It isn't that Lumet has lost his touch.

When a character is shot in the neck, man does he bleed out. But the director is working with less compelling material here and in any case this kind of narrative is running out of steam. All of that notwithstanding, this is still a notch above most of the junk polluting the multiplex screens today.

The one thing Q & A has going for it the entire time is in the form of its atmosphere; it's utterly, utterly effective atmosphere that is very much present due to one thing: we know exactly what the character of Brennan (Nolte) has done but Reilly (Hutton), who is supposed to find out exactly what the situation is, doesn't. This is an interesting idea and a bit of a spin to put on the pretty bog-standard situation of your standard, 1980s to early 1990s internal affairs cop thriller. What works is that we, the audience, have a position of power that the characters in the film do not; thus the hero (Reilly) has to work things out but we don't, however we will be with him all the way to see if he is able to crack it. Alternatively, what the audience do know is exactly what Brennan knows which perhaps lures the audience into false identification.

I think director Lumet, who is certainly well accomplished; most definitely by the time this was made, wanted to make a bit of a noir out of this idea. He shoots the film in such a way that has the hero go on his own personal quest of discovery, even if that discovery is one he might not even want to discover given the truth behind it; Lumet also injects several different types of characters into the story: the hard bodied cop in Brennan who is harder than the hero himself (an interesting spin on things); a South American drug baron and his bodyguards; an old flame who is somehow connected to the baron; a homosexual singer/performer and some allies to the upstanding hero, two of whom are 'Chappie' Chapman (Dutton) and Luis Valentin (Guzmán). Q & A works as a noir-come-internal affairs crime story because it combines things we're familiar with but injects them with, arguably, an auteur's own personal approach. Reilly as a hero seems venerable but smart given his history with the female character now connected with the drug baron and the script consistently pumps out quality one-liners, the majority of which are spouted by Brennan.

Adding to the noir pointers, it rains a lot in the film but it's significant as to when it rains. Reilly's reunification in the car with his old flame happens after the baron has threatened him to stay away from her thus creating tension; he has done something he shouldn't have after someone of a superior rank has told him not to. But the meeting in the car, although very well placed given the inclusion of the rain, allows us to see deeper into the past of said couple's relationship. It turns out the flame mistook (or perhaps she didn't) a look Reilly gave her father upon seeing he was black, something that obviously points to bigotry. But then again, the film is racist without ever really demeaning any race, religion or ethnic group. Certainly, the level of racism in the dialogue is rather high but when one of Reilly's friend's is in the bar telling him how much of a 'great man' the chief of homicide is, the element of hate is built up through the script and our opinions of a character alternate without him even being on screen. It's also worth saying that when you have a film which contains a character both black and homosexual, one of which is also physically weak the majority of people will have a field day going up in arms over it; but I felt the film steered away from any sort of stereotyping and thus does its best to create a realistic character without any aim to offend. It's worth saying here that director Lumet directed 12 Angry Men, a film that was all about fighting for what's right whether black, Spanish-American or whatever.

So Q & A is a courtroom drama set outside the court; a noir that it in colour and made in the 1990s; your not so average, everyday cop thriller from the 1980s-90s and your entertaining, compelling detective novel stretched across 130 minutes complete with colourful characters, hate, love, regret and humorous one-liners and insults. Brennon is perhaps the star but given the audience know exactly what he knows throughout several of the scenes, it's almost as if he's the star. Yes, he's mean and spiteful; yes, he intimidates and goes below the belt but if anything, I read people saying: 'watch it for Nolte'. Good call, he's almost the hero given what we know and Reilly doesn't but that's the apparent genius of Q & A: you have your detective cordon, your love cordon and your hard bodied bully cordon. I could recommend Q & A for a number of things, including a re-watch just to clarify a few things but do not let a complicated plot at all put you off seeing it.

Many reviews here have trashed Jenny Lumet's acting in this film and I want to go on record saying that I thought she gave an above average performance. I know, she's the director's daughter, but I think she more than holds her own opposite the likes of Timothy Hutton and Armand Assante (she doesn't have any scenes with Nolte).

Lumet plays a girlfriend from Reilly's (Hutton) past. Reilly dated her when he was a beat cop and has since risen to Assistant DA. When the film begins it has been 6 years since their break-up and she strolls into a tense interview session on the arm of notorious drug czar Bobby Texador (Armand Assante). Obviously shaken by her involvement in the case, Reilly attempts to talk with her about their past. I think Lumet is quite convincing in her scenes with Hutton: wrenched emotionally as she kicks him out of her mother's apartment and touching as she discusses their failed relationship. She's no Meryl Streep, but she effectively conveys the anguish of a young woman forced to re-visit her painful past.

Nolte is incredibly powerful as rogue cop Mike Brennan, a brooding, unstoppable evil force unlike any other character Nolte has played. His Mike Brennan is a distant cousin to Denzel Washington's Oscar-winning performance in "Training Day". Assante is nearly perfect as the menacing-yet-philosophical drug lord Bobby Texador. One of my favorite aspects of this script is the multi-faceted nature of Assante's character. Audiences aren't usually asked to identify with drug dealers, but Lumet's script and Assante's performance make Texador into more than just a one note crook. Both he and Nolte were Oscar-worthy, yet neither was even nominated (Jeremy Irons and Joe Pesci took home the male acting Oscars in 1990).

My only criticism of the film is the way racial and ethnic stereotypes are forced into almost every scene: the hard-drinking Irish cop, the Italian mobsters, the shyster Jewish lawyer, the street-brawling Puerto Rican gang members. Maybe Lumet had a point to make by concentrating so obsessively on his characters' ethnic origins, but it seems like over-kill. Despite this flaw, Q&A is still an absorbing and powerful film.

Whats not to like about this movie? Well, the violent and the dark, at times manic context which prevails in a good share of the scenes, together with the perversity thats being thrown at you in the most unsubtle way. Nick Nolte's Brennan must be the most foul,intimidating and maniacal cop figure ever portrayed since Orson Welles' Captain Quinlan in "Touch of evil". He pulls off a great performance, although not very pleasant to watch (nor listen, for that matter).

Whats there to like about this movie? For one thing, there is Armand Assante and what most likely is the role of his career, even if its a supporting one and he gets only a couple scene stealers. He demonstrates how great he can be if given the right part. And his role is very interesting, an archcriminal with feelings, brought out by a woman who may not even love him.

Jenny Lumet was also good in her role, although I missed more interaction between her and Assante's character. Timothy Hutton, although overshadowed by Nolte and Assante in turns (inevitable really), proves again that he is a solid actor.His performance is not spectacular(as the role doesn't allow it), but its worthwhile. Another great presence by Patrick O'Neal as the sly and cunning district attorney with a criminal past and ties to Bobby Texador(Assante).

Sidney Lumet is the master of socio-political drama/comedy/thriller. Here he mixes all three into an enjoyable, intriguing and satisfactory work. This film deserves more attention than I believe it got. But again, looking at its "walk on the wild side" perspective, it really couldn't have become a blockbuster hit an average person chooses to watch on video or DVD on a Saturday night.

"Yeah, what?" - "Who are we getting to chew up the scenery as Mike Brennan?" - "You kiddin' me? You specialising in bustin' my b**ls? Send for Nick Nolte!" - "Nick (choke) Nolte? Are you talking to me? I've just been on the phone to the mayor and the D.A. is crawlin' up my ass. You're a dinosaur, Lumet. Your ideas don't fit today. I want your director's guild ID on this desk now. People have a nasty habit of gettin' DEAD around you!"

This is one of Lumet's three hour and always worthy examinations of police corruption and compromised idealism. This is similiar to his 'Prince of the city' although it's not let down by an actor like Treat Williams who was not up to the job. Q&A suffers from some over-ripe, stagey and over played performances that are allowed to run on longer than the scene's necessity. It also has such ugliness and perversion that you wonder whether the film really needed to be made as we have been down this road before. Hutton has the best scene whereby his heart is broken by a loyal old mentor who always warned him that it was inevitable.

The main problem I have with this film is the susposed racism of the Reilly character. I'm not sure about the point of the subplot and why would a man who has a coloured girlfriend be shocked that her father is black? Surely it was on the cards.