MURDER AT 1600
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(Warner Bros.) Starring: Wesley Snipes, Diane Lane, Alan Alda, Daniel Benzali, Ronny Cox, Dennis Miller. Screenplay: Wayne Beach and David Hodgin. Producer: Arnold Kopelson and Arnon Milchan. Director: Dwight Little. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, violence, sexual situations) Running Time: 105 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
When I first saw MURDER AT 1600 on the release schedule, I was hoping against hope that it was about a crime on board a low-flying aircraft. No such luck...MURDER AT 1600 is yet another in the long line of recent films (SHADOW CONSPIRACY, MY FELLOW AMERICANS, ABSOLUTE POWER) which have turned the White House into cinema's reigning repository of all things dark, sinister and/or lascivious. It's not that some of that building's residents haven't done a good job of that on their own, at least according to the juicier innuendo, but come on already. One Oliver Stone film a year is enough without every suspense hack to come down the pike throwing an army of sinister Secret Service agents and megalomaniacal policy wonks at some poor sucker every six to eight weeks.
In MURDER AT 1600, the poor sucker is Harlan Regis (Wesley Snipes) a Washington D.C. homicide detective assigned to the case when a young female White House staffer is found stabbed to death in a bathroom. It's instantly obvious that the White House security, led by Nick Spikings (Daniel Benzali), is covering something up, but it's not clear what, or whether Secret Service liaison Nina Chance (Diane Lane) is around to help Regis or hinder him. It would be telling to reveal the plot behind the murder, but naturally it's more complicated than we or Regis initially believe, and involves a more far-reaching conspiracy.
I've said before that I'm not a big believer in conspiracy theories, but that's not why I think most films about conspiracy theories are so mediocre at best. Screenwriters Wayne Beach and David Hodgin aren't interested in creating characters -- Regis and Chance each have one hobby, as though that defined a personality -- and it's fairly obvious why. The conspiracy _is_ the central character in films like this, with the actors merely running around to achieve dastardly ends or to thwart them. A film isn't "important" just because it shows people in power abusing that power, but the film-makers behave as though the seriousness of their subject matter should be enough to satisfy the audience. Worse still, they behave as though no one else had ever thought of the idea.
That leaves actors stranded in parts that are as lively as the miniature figurines Snipes' Detective Regis sets up in recreations of the Battle of Bull Run. Snipes is a likeable enough performer, but he is not doing himself any favors by adding this film to a string of lumbering action duds like DROP ZONE and MONEY TRAIN. When a role makes you smart enough to save the government but stupid enough to walk up to a suicidal, gun-wielding lunatic and start chatting about your bureaucratic pet peeves, it's time to use the script for something useful like smacking your agent in the head. Daniel Benzali and Alan Alda have more to do with the heavy roles, but they're just as stranded; Dennis Miller's snarky sarcasm as Snipes' partner is more a comment on the quality of the film than anything going on in the film; TV pundit John McLaughlin looks delighted at the prospect of earning his SAG card for his 100th cameo appearance. MURDER AT 1600 is full of paycheck parts, and the cast doesn't dignify them with anything more than paycheck performances.
MURDER AT 1600 might have been at least a moderately diverting thriller if director Dwight Little (RAPID FIRE, MARKED FOR DEATH) had included a few...well, thrills. It's a startlingly suspenseless suspense thriller Little has cobbled together, with drawn-out chase scenes and shoot-outs which create a lot more noise than tension. By the time our heroes begin their invasion of the White House through the underground tunnel system -- which gets so much pedestrian traffic in these films that there ought to be a hot dog cart and a souvenir shop -- the audience probably won't care very much who is responsible for the film's central crime. If you've never seen one of these films before, you might get a buzz out of seeing the mighty brought low. Some of us have been on this particular White House tour too many times to find anything interesting about one more secret meeting in the Oval Office or one more clandestine rendezvous in the Lincoln Bedroom.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Pennsylvania old venues: 4.
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