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Q & ARating:
Release Date: 18 May, 1999 Retail Price: $14.98 Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: Complete Cast (8 total) |
Q & A Reviews
Ultimate Modern Noir
The film noir genre is marked by themes of corruption, femme fatales, crime capers gone bad, and A-social characters. 'Q&A' has it all and then some. Of course the other film noir trademark is stark black and white images, but if this modern noir was photographed in black and white it would probably be too gritty to even watch.
Timothy Hutton plays former flatfoot and now rising Ass't District Atty. Kevin Riley. The political ambitions of his boss however intersect with a famous and dangerous NYC police Lieutenant (Nick Nolte in perhaps his greatest role) a kingpin dope pusher (Armand Asante) the local mob and even Riley's ex-girlfriend.
The film begins with Hutton interviewing Nolte regarding the death of a hood whom Nolte claims to have shot in self defense. It seems simple enough at first but when more "Q&A's" regarding the shooting bring up some serious unanswered questions, traditioanl loyalties, a past history, and a political future all begin fighting for equal time in the mind of Kevin Riley whose whole world begins to unravel.
New York City doesn't make it as the glittering metropolis candidate city for the 2012 Olympics in this one. Instead it looks like a low level of Dante's inferno at best and a sleazy underground stop-over for the depraved at worst.
A great story marked by very strong performances.
A down-to-the-gut real, exciting, bold cop movie
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A truly gripping, action-packed and yet really moving cop film with a _raw_ complex plot (no other way to describe it) and some absolutely brilliant performances by Nick Nolte (as Brennan, a puritanical white cop too blurred by his convictions to see the error of his racist, reckless ways), Armand Assante (as a latin drug warlord and the antagonist of Nolte's character) and Timothy Hutton (as Riley, an ex-cop lawyer assigned now by the DA's office to investigate Nolte).
This is no LA Confidential or City Hall because there is much lesser of Hollywood here. Instead, expect some in-your-face narrative of police corruption, compromised idealism, racism, even a pithy take on homosexuality. The biggest surprise is the Puertorican druglord character played to the T by Armand Assante, right down to latin American quirks and verbal cadence - easily Oscar nomination material.
What's a review without some gripes though, so here. The one thing that befuddles the plot a little is the character of Riley's subplot romantic interest. Lumet's daughter herself played this role and I found her to be more than a little taut. This little apparition of an ex-love will have you wondering about what it means to the story otherwise (clue: not much) especially a reference to Riley being surprised on seeing his latin american girlfriend's father because he was black. Why this was anything special I do not know -- I'd be surprised to have a latin girlfriend for 2 years and then see her father and find out that he was black. If there was some highfalutin racism meme intended, I'd venture to say it fell flat on its foot.
Secondly, perhaps some (only some) scenes may be a tad overdone in terms of their dramatic rendering e.g., a totally unnecessary scene with a transvestite prostitute snitching away in front of the druglord or a scene with Nolte dealing with prostitutes and actually groping one of them to determine whether (s)he was a woman. Such needless scenes, and there are preciously few of them thankfully, somewhat bogged down the otherwise perfect pace of the movie.
Nonetheless, this is quite an intelligent film with a very real, gripping theme and terrific acting all round. Definitely worth at least a good evening's rental.
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