Strong and Moving!

A Masterpiece!

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Jeff Fahey is a sketch artist working the the LAPD. Drew Barrymore has witnessed someone entering the house of a murder victim and describes the woman's appearance. When Fahey finished his sketch, it looks like his wife, Sean Young. It not only LOOKS like her; it's a virtual PORTRAIT, with vibrant colors, a little beauty spot, and every hair of her wild do in place. This leaves Fahey disturbed.He doesn't confront his wife at first, but his suspicions gradually grow as he discovers for the first time that she was doing some kind of fashion work for the murder victim. It gets a little more intense when he discovers one of her ear rings at the crime scene.Young is very casual about it all. Yes, she was a client of the dead guy but so what? Her ear rings? She lost them somewhere, why? Drew Barrymore turns up a corpse in the LA River, which used to be a nice river before they covered it in concrete and cluttered it up with dead bodies. The LA River Revitalization Corporation is working to turn it from a concrete ditch into an urban oasis. That's fine, as long as they keep the corpses out. In my experience, they've shown themselves to be unresponsive to friendly overtures.In the course of the investigation, Fahey becomes a suspect himself and turns rogue. He spends the film unraveling the clues and the ending comes as rather a surprise.It seems long and plodding at times. The performances are professional but no more than that. The villain has a smooth voice and a face that, if it were a household appliance, would have to be an old-fashioned laundry washboard. The direction is pedestrian.But think of the tangled plot -- poorly executed though it may be. It's classic film noir. If it weren't in color, and if Victor Mature or Glenn Ford or somebody had been the lead, and it had been shot with striking shadows and kick lights, it would be a noir exemplar.

This straight-to-video movie was obviously made after the "neo-noir" revival that began in late 80'd/early 90's with films like "The Grifters" and "After Dark My Sweet", but before the advent of the "erotic thriller" ushered in by the success of "Basic Instinct". It has less eroticism than your typical "erotic thriller" (although it does start out with an acrobatic sex scene involving British beauty Charlotte Lewis), and like a lot of the low-budget "neo-noirs" of the era it has way too much sun-drenched LA ambiance to be very noirish. It is redeemed somewhat, however, by the interesting cast.Jeff Fahey plays a sketch artist who, while sketching a murder suspect with a witness (Drew Barrymore), realizes the killer might be his own wife (Sean Young). He changes the sketch and inadvertently draws another woman he encountered near the murder scene (Stacy Haiduk), implicating her in the murder. Then he finds himself implicated as well when the witness turns up dead. After that though, the movie falls on the old cliché of the suspect investigating the crime to clear his own name. And the ending is pretty predictable.Fahey is a talented actor who makes his underdeveloped, blow-dried character a lot more likable than he ought to be. Sean Young is an interesting actress who was done in more by her own real-life erratic behavior than any lack of talent. She's pretty good, but doesn't have a lot of screen time. Drew Barrymore is, of course, a big star now, but this movie came at a really awkward point in her career between her child acting years and her "lethal loilta" career-revival period when she appeared in "Poison Ivy" and as teen prostitute/would-be assassin Amy Fisher in "The Amy Fisher Story". Both she and Stacy Haiduk (from "Luther the Greek") play surprisingly functional (and non-erotic) roles, but still it is unusual to see an actor of that caliber in a supporting role in a film like this. Charlotte Lewis wasn't much of an actress, but nobody ever seemed to complain too much, and she too has a relatively small role as a prostitute. Rounding out the cast is memorable character actor as a police lieutenant. This is certainly not good, but the interesting cast prevents it from being a total waste of time. . .

"Sketch Artist" feels like just about everyone involved in making the movie - the actors, director, and writer - has the life sucked out of them before filming started. To begin with, take the title character, played by Jeff Fahey. There is no particular reason why we feel we should get involved in his plight. He is almost completely without emotion or passion, his appearance is sloppy, he makes some pretty dumb decisions, and his investigation of the mystery is done incredibly slowly, like he just doesn't care about what could happen to him. The director didn't seem to care about his character as well. There's no feeling of tension or panic anywhere in the movie, and the climax has the impact of a wet noodle hitting the ground.I will admit that Drew Barrymore, in a limited role, does give a surprisingly decent performance. And it's always fun to see bald-headed actor James Tolkan play another authority figure, though his role is limited as well. But neither actor is given enough to make the movie worth watching.

Jeff Fahey has such alert eyes and a smudgy, insidious smile that every character he plays seems villainous; therefore, it doesn't really work to cast him as the good guy of the piece, the audience is just waiting for his character to crack and start blowing people away. Drew Barrymore, fresh off her acclaimed role as "Poison Ivy", must have done this film simply as a favor to director Phedon Papamichael (he was the cinematographer on "Ivy"); playing a character named Daisy Drew (!), she's bumped off right away, which leaves us with no one to look at but Jeff Fahey and Sean Young (who hasn't had a single subtle moment on camera since "Blade Runner"). This witless script, by Michael Angeli, concerns a police sketch artist who draws his own wife's face from a murder witness's testimony, and while that's not a bad idea for a plot, it would be much better suited to an hour-long TV series. This cable-made movie is short on inspiration (beginning with the casting) and shorter on surprises. * from ****