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A police detective lures a man out the rear door of a nightclub
and shoots him dead. He places a gun in the dead man's hand,
before threatening a couple of lowlifes into backing his story.
Al Reilly is a young lawyer whose first job for the D.A.'s
office is to tie-up this "cut and dried" case of self-defence.
Nobody expects him to dig deep; what he discovers is a conceited
and thoroughly crooked but respected cop. In fact, it seems
that almost everyone around him is a bigot on the political
trail. It's difficult to know who to trust. And just to throw
an additional spanner in the works, the wife of a gangland
boss witness is Reilly's old flame..
Q&A
is another example of an individual going up against the establishment.
However, in this case it's a little more realistic, in that
there's no good guy as such, and all the characters are various
shades of grey. Nothing exactly goes according to plan either.
There are plenty of disasters, and no happy outcome. In this
manner, it's a little reminiscent of The X-Files: no
aliens (only illegal ones) but plenty of internal cover-ups.
Nick
Nolte copes well with a pretty run-of-the-mill script. His
character manipulates everyone around him, amidst a city den
of iniquity. Everywhere you look there's transvestites, racists,
crooks and blasphemers, and it's obvious the setting is intended
to spawn the hard-hitting bent cop, who sees himself as the
untouchable judge, jury and executioner.
Although Q&A is set in America, and it's a world apart
from the Britain of today, this film doesn't inspire confidence
in law and order. There's no doubt that corruption does occasionally
take place; however, our friends from across the pond do tend
to be moderately obsessed with conspiracies. The fact that
we've witnessed so many of these "plots", in effect belittles
the overall impact of the film. And one more thing: modern
day fictional gangsters/hoodlums leave me cold.
This
is a movie you could comfortably sit down and watch on TV
one evening, if you've got nothing more productive to do,
but it's nothing special, and certainly won't stand repeated
viewings. With no extras, it's another poor release. Rent,
don't buy.
Ty
Power
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