JENNIFER 8
A film review by Jon Webb
Copyright 1992 Jon Webb
This is an entirely conventional cop thriller, the only twist being that the beautiful young lady that the cop falls in love with and must defend is blind (and played quite well by Uma Thurman). Andy Garcia is the cop; he has a bad reputation and a past marred by drinking and divorce (just once I'd like to see a cop thriller where the hero drinks socially but not too much, has a wife who understands his devotion to his job because she is devoted to her's as well, and whose children admire and heroize him though they naturally wish he could spend more time with them. In this fantasy cop thriller, I see the hero coming home late at night; he enters the house, goes to the kitchen, pours himself some milk, looks through the day's mail, turns out the light, goes to bed, slightly awakening his wife, and goes to sleep; the next scene is him back at work the next morning.)
The second nicest thing (the nicest is Uma Thurman's performance) about this film is the feeling of dread in almost every scene through the first half of the film. The framing is too tight; there are too many things in the background that someone could be hiding behind; you constantly feel that something is going to jump out at you. After something finally does, the tension relaxes and the movie gets tangled up trying to tie together the bits of evidence sprinkled through the movie.
John Malkovich shows up for a few scenes towards the end; he's enjoying himself, and he's just a really fine actor, but I got the impression that he was thrown in simply to make the film seem less like the conventional piece of work it is. He probably worked for a day or two, tops.
The plot is casually thrown together; there's little motivation for Garcia's character to become as obsessed as he does; there are important technical details wrong, such as every camera in existence makes a fair bit of sound when it winds the film; the ending doesn't really satisfy; the stupid final scene is as cloying and sentimental as they come; etc.
Not a film I liked. I'd suggest you see UNDER SIEGE instead -- although I haven't seen it, it seems to have remarkable staying power.
-- J
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