This movie is bad, laughably bad. Incomprehensibly lame, and yet I couldn't stop watching it. Well, ok, I tried, but on a Sunday afternoon, the TV choices are slim. I admit, the idea is intriguing-- an old man writes a novel about a bunch of lawyers being killed, and then dies himself, but not before showing the book to a disbarred lawyer who claims it as his own & makes a ton of money, but oops! the book isn't fiction & our protagonist winds up implicating himself for the murders. A decent idea is royally fouled-up. What's so bad, you ask? Gosh, what's not? It's hard to narrow it down to 1,000 words. For starters, the terrible makeup. Latex wrinkles alone does not an old man make. Ok, so then let's throw in an --ultra-fake-- English accent to distract you from the fact that this man does not walk, talk, fish, or drink like an old man, ie: SLOWLY. No, it's clearly a guy in disguise & I find it terribly ironic that it's *spoiler* a DRAMA teacher in disguise! Well, you know what they say, Those who can, DO, those who can't, TEACH. Clear case of that going on with this character. (And that's only one of 3 disguises!)
Alright, lets talk about the costumes. Like do you really think that if a lawyer was on the run, hiding in his hometown, that he'd be wearing his usual lawyerly 3-pc suits? Um, no. Come on, shave your beard, put on a tshirt, throw a cap on... we know you have 'em, you wore them in the fishing scene. Or Tom Berenger's "I'm wearing a fishing hat, I must be coming back from vacation" look. What shall we dis next? the dialogue? direction? cookie-cutter characters? voice-over? Cuba's "performance" consisting only of earnest wide eyes & a clenched jaw? Hell, he did the same thing in "Radio", but with a different walk. What about the criminal misuse of Mariane Jean-Baptiste who deserves much, much better than this? Or how about that ending? I won't give it away, but everything gets wrapped up in a lovely little package, but all we get to see is the wrapping paper. It makes no sense. I guess for everything to be explained-- why is she friends with him again? who exactly was that lawyer? why was the judge smiling?, etc-- they wouldve needed to add like another 20 minutes to the running time.
So anyway, if you want to get together with a bunch of lawyers or film geeks, this might be a fun movie to roast, but why not rent an actual good movie instead?