If you're a fan of film noir, you have to be familiar with Chazz Palminteri. He's a really good script writer and an excellent actor. And F. Murray Abraham appearing in the same film? Get outta town. I had to rent this.

It's based on a true story of a small group of judges in Italy taking on the out-of-control Sicilian mafia, in the face of almost certain assassination. The story is compelling enough, but the jerky, haphazard way it's been slung together makes it difficult to follow. If you didn't already know that the character played by Palminteri was assassinated, you will after the first 5 minutes. His car gets blown up, and then we flash back to his early days working in the bankruptcy office to watch his promotion to judge and so on. However, each successive scene doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with the last. You're never really quite sure where or when you are and it gets maddening.

The introduction of the woman who was to become his wife was interesting enough. The scene was very well acted. But if you were hoping to catch a glimpse of the courtship (no pun intended, she's a judge too) you can just forget it. In fact you can forget her, she's basically out of the picture. To go to such efforts introducing a character and then abandoning her is hard to figure.

There are about a half dozen characters in the film who didn't really do anything at all apart from stand there and look cool, then get killed, and you have to wonder why they were introduced at all. One of them is the informant played by F. Murray Abraham. He's hardly in a starring role, so don't rent the movie based on your desire to watch a good performance by Abraham. He does a good job, but shouldn't have been on the cover.

This movie smacks of one that used to be an 8 hour miniseries and then was cut down to fit the home video format. It needed a lot more time to explain some of the half-baked storylines they unfolded. They also needed a director with a critical eye. One who could have looked at tape of the camera inexplicably orbiting a static conversation and said, "No, this sucks. Let's re-shoot." I've never heard of Ricky Tognazzi before, and I likely never will again. Perhaps HBO had a deadline and they just slapped it together at the last second. I didn't know it was an HBO movie until the very end, so I came in with no prejudices.

It wasn't the worst movie I've seen all year, but it tried.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age