We are introduced to a character, Frank Keller, that just achieved 20 years in service, that can't see really something after the retirement (that is what he hears of a lot, about the retirement) and that not long before he had a divorce (one the guys from his job is now with his ex-wife. Frank is like "we have been working together for like 6 years but we have never go for a beer yet somehow you stole my wife", and we will see Frank apologizing more than once with that guy). On the other hand we have the murders: three murdered men, similar circumstances, certainly only one murderer. The third murder is of a man we know, the expected murder, expected by Frank and by another detective (John Goodman's character Detective Sherman Touhey from Queens).
This film, Harold Becker's Sea of Love (with Al Pacino as Frank Keller, Ellen Barkin as Helen Cruger and John Goodman. Also Samuel L. Jackson appears at the beginning of the film as a criminal who thought he was going to meet the New York Yankees but soon received, like many other criminals, the bad news: no Yankees, only arrests. From the IMDb trivia section: "The apprehension of criminals by arranging a "Meet the Yankees" breakfast was based on an actual event"), has two parts, the first one is the one I liked better and the second is just about a love relationship, the whole thing with the murders is sort of just a pretext. And is typical stuff with the woman disappointed after finding out that Frank lied, and is predictable since you always know Pacino and Barkin's character will end happily together (and well the detectives found out who the murderer was just out of luck).
Sea of Love is an entertaining film with a first part that is simply that, a fast-paced entertainment and a second part that, like I said, is predictable, with a sexy Barkin and with really bad scenes (for instance take the supermarket supposedly very sexy scene, very bad music is what stands out in that part!). In the Wikipedia page of we can read that Sea of Love is "credited as the film that pulled Pacino out of his slump of film failures that occupied much of the 1980s". Pacino had 5 performances in the 80s: in Cruising, Author! Author!, Scarface, Revolution and Sea of Love. Now, I have seen only De Palma's Scarface and Sea of Love (just yesterday I saw it for the very first time), I think Pacino is just f****** great as Tony Montana and just good as Frank Keller, never really great, he entertains just like the film itself and certainly this performance is extremely far to be one of his best (from the IMDb biography of Pacino: "It marked the second phase of Pacino's career, being the first to feature his now famous dark, owl eyes and hoarse, gravelly voice").
And the song, here we can hear bits of Phil Phillips' song more than a couple of times, including a very funny interpretation by John Goodman. Actually the first version of the song "Sea of Love" that I ever listened was the version of the great Tom Waits (my favourite). The original version, by Phil Phillips, was first released in 1959 and Tom Waits' version in 1989 on the soundtrack of this film. But I listened Waits' version for the very first time just a couple or so years ago on Waits' latest album, the 2006 "Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards" and just this year thanks to my mother (she loves that song as much as I love Waits' version) I listened, finally, the extremely famous original (and she listened the version of Tom Waits and she was like "what is this?", certainly not quite her cup of tea but I do liked the original) version. The song eventually made me remember about that film of which I read positive comments some time ago and then I found out that Waits' version was originally released on the soundtrack of that film, pretty much it was time to finally give Becker's Sea of Love a shot. So Sea of Love is just light entertainment to see once, nothing that you must check out.