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  DOWSE movie guide review of A Slight Case Of Murder

A Slight Case Of Murder
Director: Steven Schachter
90 minutes (12) Warner/TNT rental
review by Jeff Young

Here's another movie (well, a TV movie) based on a novel by Donald Westlake. A Slight Case Of Murder won a Mystery Writers Of America Edgar Allan Poe Award last month, and deservedly so. William H. Macy (who co-wrote this adaptation) stars as a film critic suspected of murdering his girlfriend, who finds himself lurching from social disaster to moral dilemma when he's blackmailed by a corrupt private eye (James Cromwell). Naturally, as a movie reviewer, Macy's character knows every variation of crime mystery dramas, and while he's talking to camera, getting into bed with a cop's wife, and creating a bigger mess each time he solves a minor problem, this assuredly witty satire on film noir detective stories is both wonderfully intriguing and marvellously entertaining. Adam Arkin's stoical homicide investigator and would be screenwriter makes a perfect foil for Macy's determinedly erratic but sympathetic protagonist. The knowing sense of irony that underscores a string of unexpected plot twists and turns eventually leads us to an ending that's satisfactory, without being the least bit preachy.

Jeff Young
originally published in VideoVista #15 (June 2000)

DOWSE Guide to the Movies is compiled by Tony Lee editor of Pigasus Press
You can order videos and DVD releases reviewed on these pages at Blackstar

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