Guilty Pleasure No. 81: The Replacements (dir by Howard Deutch)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2000’s The Replacements finds America in crisis!

With the season already underway, football players are going on strike! They want better contracts. They want more money. They want …. well, they want a lot of stuff. Meanwhile, the fans just want to know who is going to make the playoffs. There are only four games left in the season and the Washington Sentinels need to win three of them to make it into the playoffs. The owner of the team (Jack Warden) recruits burned-out coach McGinty (Gene Hackman) to take over a team that will be made up of replacement players. McGinty says that he wants to pick his own players and he doesn’t want any interference from the team’s owner. Anyone want to guess how long that’s going to last?

McGinty’s team is made up of the usual collection of quirky misfits who show up in movies like this. Tight End Brian Murphy (David Denman, who later played Roy on The Office) is deaf. One of the offensive linemen is a former SUMO wrestler. Orlando Jones plays a receiver who has a day job at a grocery store. The kicker (Rhys Ifan) is a Welsh soccer player. (Okay, a footballer, I don’t care, call it whatever you want.) Jon Favreau plays a berserk defender who is a member of the police force. Leading them on the field is Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves), a quarterback with a confidence problem. Cheering for them from the sidelines and falling in love with Shane is bar owner-turned-head-cheerleader Annabelle (Brooke Langton). Backing up Annabelle is a cheer squad made up of former strippers, the better to distract the other teams.

It’s not often you see a film where the heroes cross a picket line but that’s what happens with The Replacements. Then again, it’s not like the folks on strike are driving trucks or unloading freight for a living. They’re multi-millionaires who want even more money and don’t even care about whether the team wins or loses. When the replacement players actually start to win games and become beloved in the city, the striking players react by starting a bar brawl. In the end, striking quarterback Eddie Martell (Brett Cullen) doesn’t even stick with his principles. He crosses the picket line and creates a quarterback controversy, just in time for the last game of the season.

The Replacements is thoroughly predictable but also very likable. The cast gels nicely, with Hackman especially standing out as the gruff but caring coach. Keanu Reeves is not totally believable as a quarterback with a confidence problem. You take one look at Reeves and you don’t believe he’s had an insecure day in his life. But, as an actor, he’s so likable that it doesn’t matter. The same goes for the entire cast, whether they’re on the playing field or singing I Will Survive in jail. I don’t particularly care much about football but I did enjoy The Replacements.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Film Review: The Death of Stalin (dir by Armando Iannucci)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2017’s The Death of Stalin opens in Moscow in 1953. Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) calls into Radio Moscow and demands that he be sent a recording of the piano concerto that has just been performed live. The only problem is that no one bothered to record it while it was being performed. In a panic, the head of Radio Moscow announces that no one — not the musicians, not the exhausted conductor, and certainly not the audience — is allowed to leave until the orchestra has performed again.

Indeed, one of the recurring themes of The Death of Stalin is that everyone is terrified of their beloved dictator. The orchestra fears being executed for failing to recreate their performance. The members of the Central Committee fear being the next person to be purged from the ranks of Stalin’s government. The two guards that are posted outside of Stalin’s bedroom are so terrified of interrupting Stalin and getting on his bad side that they don’t investigate when they hear Stalin collapsing to the floor. When Stalin is found unconscious, the only doctors available are young and inexperienced because Stalin recently exiled all of the good doctors from Moscow. Even after Stalin dies from a cerebral hemorrhage, his reign of terror continues as all the members of his household staff are promptly executed to keep anyone from learning either the exact details of Stalin’s death or the way that the members of the Central Committee responded to his passing.

The Death of Stalin is a dark comedy that follows the members of the Central Committee as they scramble to protect their own positions after Stalin’s death. The humor comes from watching historical figures like Nikita Khrushchev, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrenti Beria, and Georgy Malenkov act like panicked junior executives who are desperately trying to save their own jobs during a corporate takeover. Of course, the stakes are a bit higher. Whoever succeeds Stalin will undoubtedly want to execute every other contender for the post. As with so many of Armando Iannucci’s works, the humor comes from watching very powerful people act in very immature and petty ways. While Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) tries to convince people that he actually is in charge, the brutal Beria (Simon Russell Beale) tries to bully his way into power and the wily Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi, giving one of his best performances) waits for his moment to strike. (Beria, it should be noted, is one of history’s greatest monsters and the film, while a comedy, does not shy away from his depravity.) Molotov (a hilarious Michael Palin) is so loyal to the Party that he says that Stalin was absolutely correct to have his wife executed just to then have Beria show up and reveal that Molotov’s wife is still alive. Meanwhile, Stalin’s idiot son (Rupert Friend) claims that it’s all an American plot while the rest of the Central Committee laughs at him behind his back. Only Georgy Zhukov (Jason Isaacs) seems to have full control of his emotions and his actions and it’s not a surprise to learn that, long after the events depicted in this film, purged from the Party. In The Death of Stalin, the leaders of Russia are obviously scared of anyone who is too competent at their job.

The Death of Stalin is not only a satiric portrayal of petty bureaucrats. It’s also a darkly humorous look of life in a dictatorship, where everyone is at the whim of whoever happens to be in charge at any given time. The film is full of power-hungry narcissists who use their ideology and their nationalism as a shield for their own ambitions. Everyone wants to control someone else. Even as mourners pass by Stalin’s coffin, they’re given orders on how to properly grieve and move. The film ends with a series of pictures of various people either having their faces scratched or, in some cases, just vanishing. In a free country, failure leads to humiliation. In a dictatorship, it leads to non-existence as the formerly prominent are suddenly erased from a history that no longer has a place for them. Ironically, of all the original leaders of communist Russia, it was Molotov who lived the longest. He was 96 when he died in 1986. If not for Stalin’s sudden death, he probably would have been purged and executed at the age of 63.

On this May Day, with so many people currently trying to rehabilitate the reputations of the 20th Century’s worst dictators, The Death of Stalin is must-watch.

The Eric Roberts Collection: Red Prophecies (dir by Rodney James Hewitt and Christopher Gosch)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I was going to take a short break from reviewing the many films of Eric Roberts but then I came across 2021’s Red Prophecies on Tubi.

Actually, did I just say 2021? Coming up with a date for this film is actually a little bit more complicated than that. This film was apparently actually filmed in 2014 but it sat on the shelf for a while. The version that was released has a prologue and an epilogue that were obviously filmed in 2020. Russian actor Alexander Nevsky appears in both scenes, talking about his plans for manipulating the upcoming U.S. elections. It’s one of those scenes that is meant to be chilling but instead just reminds the viewer of how ludicrously melodramatic and performative most political discourse has been since 2017.

The majority of the film features Eric Roberts as John Payne, an American reporter who moves to Russia and becomes famous for his ability to predict what’s going to happen in Russian politics. For instance, Payne writes that an opposition leader is going to be arrested and he is! Payne gets his information from “The Oracle,” an anonymous source who sends him emails that John, who is supposed to be a veteran reporter, types up without question. Casper Van Dien, who is playing some sort of Russian intelligence agent, tries to figure out where Payne is getting his information from. Stephen Baldwin shows up as a shady Russian politician. Michael Madsen plays a UN official who Payne suspects is actually corrupt. (A corrupt UN official is probably the most plausible of the film’s plot points.) It’s all a part of a huge plot to destabilize both Russia and the United States. How it all links together is anyone’s guess. The story is not easy to follow, which is probably why the film sat on a shelf for seven years until someone realized that there was a market for international conspiracy films in the United States.

There’s a lot of familiar faces in this movie. We don’t actually hear their voices in the film because apparently, it would have cost too much money to have them come back to do ADR. So, instead, we get one person trying to sound like a dozen different people. Eric Roberts, Stephen Baldwin, and Michael Madsen all have very distinctive voices so when they all sound like a 20-something using autotune, you’re going to notice.

This was a messy film. I’m not really sure if it was mean to be pro-Russian or anti-Russian. The film takes place in Russia and it deals with people being oppressed and opposition leaders being murdered by the government but one name this is never mentioned is the name of Vladimer Putin. Is this movie supposed to be taking place in the real world or an alternate world? I was never quite sure. Several of the characters could have easily been cut from the film and again, buying the film’s story means accepting that a famously hard-boiled reporter would automatically trust an email sent to him by someone calling themselves The Oracle. It’s nice to see the cream of the B-movie, straight-to-video crop all in one film together but otherwise, Red Prophecies doesn’t add up to much.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Film Review: The FBI Story (dir by Mervyn LeRoy)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1959’s The FBI Story, veteran FBI agent Chip Hardesty (James Stewart) delivers a lecture to a group of new FBI recruits. He tells them the story of both the FBI and his time as a member of the agency. Somewhat implausibly, it turns out that Chip was involved with nearly every major FBI operation, as we discover while watching this flashback-filled, episodic film.

Battling the Ku Klux Klan in the Deep South? Chip was there.

Investigating the Oklahoma Indian murders? Chip was not only there but he was also the one who solved them through handwriting analysis! (Decades later, the crimes and the investigation would serve as the basis of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.)

During the public enemy era, Chip was there. He was there when Baby Face Nelson killed several unarmed FBI agents, including Chip’s best friend (Murray Hamilton). He was there when John Dillinger was gunned down in Chicago. He was there when my distant ancestor “Pretty Boy” Floyd was killed in Ohio. He wasn’t there when J. Edgar Hoover personally arrested Alvin Karpis or when “Machine Gun” Kelly said, “Don’t shoot, G-Man!” but Chip still makes sure to tell the recruits about it. He also talks about the gunfight that killed Ma Barker, presented her as being a machine gun-toting madwoman.

Chip investigates subversives during World War II and helped to round up Americans of German and Japanese descent during the internment era. (Chip insists that they weren’t rounded up because of their ancestry but because the FBI had gotten reports that they might be disloyal.) When the war wraps up, Chip turns his attention to fighting the international communist conspiracy and good for him. (Communism sucks!)

Strangely enough, it appears that Chip also tells the recruits a good deal about his personal life because we certainly do see a lot of it. Chip marries a librarian named Lucy (Vera Miles), who struggles with the demands of being an FBI agent’s wife but who ultimately accepts that Chip has to do his duty. Sometimes, Lucy wants Chip to quit and sometimes, Chip is tempted to get out. But they always remember that Chip and the FBI have a job to do. They raise a family. They lose a son at Iwo Jima. Their faith in God and country remains undiminished.

The FBI Story was made with the full cooperation of the FBI, with J. Edgar Hoover personally approving the script and making suggestions. Hoover even appeared as himself in the film, accepting a report about an airplane bombing with a grim look on his face. At one point, Chip is prepared to quit the FBI until he hears a speech from Hoover and he’s so inspired that he keeps his resignation letter tucked away in his suit pocket. Since this film came out in 1959, there’s no details of the FBI tapping the phones of Martin Luther King or Hoover collecting dirt on his political opponents. Instead, The FBI Story is pure propaganda, your reminder that law enforcement never makes mistakes and civil liberties can be always be sacrificed for the greater good.

It’s simplistic propaganda and it’s overlong and it promotes a few falsehoods as facts. (Despite what the film says, Pretty Boy Floyd had nothing to do with the Kansas City Massacre and most historians agree that Ma Barker was not the criminal mastermind that Hoover made her out to be after she was caught in the crossfire between her sons and law enforcement.) The film rather casually dismisses the concern over the World War II internments of American citizens. To me, something like that is a big deal but the film insists to us that it was all blown out of proportion. That’s the one moment when not even the film itself seems to be totally sold on what it’s selling.

Fortunately, the film stars the ever-reliable James Stewart, who brings his natural mix of charm and gravity to the role of Chip Hardesty. Stewart was a bit too old to play Chip as a bumbling young man in the early part of the film but, as the character grows up, so does Stewart’s performance. The scene where he and Vera Miles learn that his son has been killed in combat feels like it’s from a different and far better movie. I guess my point here is that James Stewart was one of those actors who could make even questionable material watchable and that’s certainly what he does with The FBI Story. The FBI, at a time when Hoover was aging and the excesses of the McCarthy era had left many Americans uneasy about the government, decides to borrow James Stewart’s credibility to boost their own. You may not like the FBI but how can you not love Jimmy Stewart?

The FBI Story came out the same year as one of Stewart’s best films, Anatomy of a Murder, a film that was a complicated as The FBI Story was simplistic. Stewart gives one of his best performances in Anatomy of a Murder, playing the type of character that Chip Hardesty probably wouldn’t want to have much to do with. With these two films, Stewart showed us both sides of the American justice system, the men who are tasked with enforcing the law and, even more importantly, the men who are tasked with making sure that law was enforced fairly. Whichever side your on, you have to be happy to have Jimmy Stewart there.

Insomnia Files #71 and #72: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (dir by Bruce Bilson) and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders II (dir by Michael O’Herlihy)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have gone over to YouTube and watched 1979’s Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders! And then, if you were still having trouble getting to sleep, you could have followed it up with 1980’s Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders II! And then if you were somehow still not able to get any rest …. well, sorry. There’s only two of them. I guess you could watch that Making the Team show. I don’t know.

Anyway, back to the movies!

The first Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders stars Jane Seymour as a serious journalist who at first scoffs at the idea of going undercover as a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader. But her ex-boyfriend and editor (Bert Convy) insists that she take the assignment. Jane goes undercover and even makes the squad! (It’s never mentioned whether she has any sort of dance or cheerleading experience so I find it a bit odd that she actually made it onto a professional cheerleading squad but whatever….) Seymour gets to know the other members of the Squad, including the Love Boat’s Lauren Tewes. She comes to realize that she doesn’t want to write up a tabloid story about the cheerleaders. These are “good, down home girls,” she tells Convy. Convy doesn’t care. He wants scandal!

He’s not going to get it, though. The main message of this film is that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are basically saints with pom poms. Sure, one of them has a loser ex-boyfriend. And another one of them struggles a bit with the routines. It’s not an easy job but, in the end, everyone does their bit to support the team!

It’s all pretty silly but I’m from Dallas and I’m surrounded by Cowboy fans who have been complaining nonstop about the team for as long as I can remember so I enjoyed watching a movie that portrayed the Cowboys organization as being the greatest group of people on the planet. (No drug or gun problems here!) It’s very much a film of the 70s, made for television and straddling the line between being exploitive and being wholesome. Yes, the costumes are skimpy but no one smokes, drinks, or curses. The film features soapy drama, actual Dallas locations, 70s fashion, a great disco soundtrack, and dorky Bert Convy as a womanizer. Plus, like me, Jane Seymour has mismatched eyes. How can you not love this film!?

As for the sequel, it ditches almost everyone from the first film. Only Laraine Stephens, as the squad’s no-nonsense coach, returns. She’s got a whole new squad to deal with and only a limited amount of time to perfect the cheer that will win the Cowboys the Super….sorry, I mean to say the playoff game. Whenever anyone in the film says, “playoff game,” their lips read “Super Bowl,” so I guess there was some last-minute tinkering after shooting was completed. The squad also has to get ready to tour with the USO and to perform at a children’s hospital. (Ray Wise appears as a doctor at the children’s hospital.) The Cheerleaders are not only going to bring peace to the world but they’re also going to give those children the inspiration they need to get better. Yay!

This one isn’t as much fun, largely because Laraine Stephens’s character isn’t that much fun. The first film featured the very British Jane Seymour in Texas, somehow becoming a member of an all-American football team’s cheerleading squad and it was impossible not to enjoy the implausibility of it all. The second film is just Laraine Stephens getting mad at people for not having the routine down to perfection. No thanks, movie, I’m done with dealing with demanding choreographers. There’s a reason why I turned down all of those offers to join the cheer squad in high school. (For the record, my sister was the greatest cheerleader our high school ever had or ever will have! Erin watched the first movie with me a few weeks ago. She said it was okay but she didn’t think Jane Seymour was a convincing cheerleader.)

According to what I’ve read online, the first Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders film was a huge rating success. The second film was less so, which I guess is why there was never a third.

Previous Insomnia Files:

Story of Mankind
Stag
Love Is A Gun
Nina Takes A Lover
Black Ice
Frogs For Snakes
Fair Game
From The Hip
Born Killers
Eye For An Eye
Summer Catch
Beyond the Law
Spring Broke
Promise
George Wallace
Kill The Messenger
The Suburbans
Only The Strong
Great Expectations
Casual Sex?
Truth
Insomina
Death Do Us Part
A Star is Born
The Winning Season
Rabbit Run
Remember My Name
The Arrangement
Day of the Animals
Still of The Night
Arsenal
Smooth Talk
The Comedian
The Minus Man
Donnie Brasco
Punchline
Evita
Six: The Mark Unleashed
Disclosure
The Spanish Prisoner
Elektra
Revenge
Legend
Cat Run
The Pyramid
Enter the Ninja
Downhill
Malice
Mystery Date
Zola
Ira & Abby
The Next Karate Kid
A Nightmare on Drug Street
Jud
FTA
Exterminators of the Year 3000
Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
The Haunting of Helen Walker
True Spirit
Project Kill
Replica
Rollergator
Hillbillys In A Haunted House
Once Upon A Midnight Scary
Girl Lost
Ghosts Can’t Do It
Heist
Mind, Body & Soul
Candy
Shortcut to Happiness

Stallion Road (1947, directed by James V. Kern)

Posted on April 30, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Writer Stephen Purcell comes out to the country to visit an old school friend, veterinarian Larry Hanrahan (Ronald Reagan). Larry is great at taking care of horses but a little clueless when it comes to women. Both rancher Rory Teller (Alexis Smith) and Rory’s neighbor, Daisy Otis (Peggy Knudsen), have a thing for Larry but Larry is kept pretty busy taking care of all the horses in the community. Stephen decides that he likes Rory but, deep down, he knows there’s no way he can compete with Larry. When Larry gets busy tending to an anthrax outbreak, Rory finds herself tempted to give Stephen a shot.

When Stallion Road originally went into production, Humphrey Bogart was cast as Stephen and Lauren Bacall was cast as Rory. Both of the stars refused to do the movie, feeling it was too lightweight. Audiences were cheated out of a chance to see Reagan and Bogart, who were friends despite their differing styles of acting, co-starring opposite each other. (They were both in Dark Victory but they didn’t share any scenes.) Speaking of Bogart and Reagan, it’s a Hollywood legend that Reagan was originally offered the role of Rick in Casablanca though I’ve also read that Reagan was actually offered the role of Victor Laszlo.

Bogart and Bacall were right. Stallion Road is the epitome of lightweight entertainment, with Reagan giving a pleasant but bland performance as Larry and the film never really allowing any doubt as to who Rory belongs with. It’s the type of movie that would be a Hallmark film today so if you’re actually looking for a realistic drama about ranching and taking care of horses, it’s best to look elsewhere. This film does show why Reagan was such a successful politician. Even though his character isn’t exactly exciting, he’s innately likable and, from the minute he first appears, he’s dependable. He’s someone who any rancher would trust to take care of their horses.

The Eric Roberts Collection: The Rideshare Killer (dir by Ashley Scott Meyers)

Posted on April 30, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

W-Ride! W-Ride! W-Ride!

2022’s The Rideshare Killer ends with the creation of W-Ride, a rideshare app for women only. All of the drivers are women. All of other passengers are women. Men are not allowed to get in the car. The sounds like a good idea to me, though I imagine it would probably lead to a lawsuit in real life. Actually, forget probably. It would definitely lead to a lawsuit. That said, I would still download the app.

Unfortunately, Julia (Tuesday Knight) only comes up with the idea after almost all of her friends and co-workers are murdered by a serial killer. Julia is the CEO of Rock N Ride, the rideshare app that is singlehandedly making taxis obsolete. She and two friends run it from her living room. They all have laptops so we know they’re coders. Who is the killer? I won’t spoil it, beyond saying that it won’t take you by surprise. That said, I did laugh out loud when I heard the killer’s motive because it seems like something that could have been accomplished without necessarily becoming a serial killer. Someone obviously did not think things through before deciding to become a criminal.

The main reason I watched this movie was because Eric Roberts was in it. He plays the detective who is investigating the murders. It’s a typical Eric Roberts cameo. He delivers his lines with his signature half-smile, as if he can’t believe the kids today with their laptops and the rideshares. As for the rest of the movie, it’s pretty dire. The budget was obviously low and the cast stiffly delivers their lines with the type of overly precise diction that one would expect to hear in a high school theatrical production. Tuesday Knight is not a bad actress but she’s tripped up by a poorly written script.

That said, I’ll never get W-Ride W-ride W-ride out of my head.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Nine Lives Are Not Enough (1941, directed by A. Edward Sutherland)

Posted on April 29, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Matt Sawyer (Ronald Reagan) is a junior reporter whose enthusiasm for breaking the big news is always getting him in trouble. Sometimes, he runs with a story before getting all of his facts straight and the newspaper gets sued. If not for his enthusiasm and his affability, Matt would have been fired a long time ago. Instead of losing his job, Matt just finds himself demoted to riding in a squad car with Sgt. Daniels (James Gleason) and the slow-witted Officer Slattery (Edward Brophy). Matt still manages to find a story when he and the cops discover a dead man in a flophouse.

The man turns out to have been a millionaire. The coroner rules his death a suicide but Matt is convinced that it was murder. How could the man have shot himself if he died with his hands in his pockets? Over the objections of the police and his editors, Matt investigates the man’s death. Helping him out is the man’s daughter, Jane Abbott (Joan Perry).

Nine Lives Are Not Enough is one the many B-pictures that Ronald Regan made for Warner Bros. It’s only 63 minutes long and, despite the murder mystery, the emphasis is more on comedy than drama. For all of his reputation for being a stiff actor, Reagan proves himself to be surprisingly adroit when it comes to exchanging snappy dialogue with his editor. This film showcases the innate likability that made Reagan a success as both an actor and a politician. What he lacks in range, he makes up for in sheer affability. Watching Reagan in movies like this, it is easy to see the limitations that kept him from being a major star while also revealing why he later had so much success asking people to vote for him.

Considering how the press felt and still feels about Ronald Reagan, it’s entertaining to see him cast as a reporter who has a reputation for getting the story wrong. When it’s really important, though, Matt Sawyer gets it right.

Scenes That I Love: The Ending of High Noon

Posted on April 29, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In honor of Fred Zinnemann’s birthday, today’s scene of the day comes from his best film, 1952’s High Noon. High Noon tells the story of the honest and forthright Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper), who finds himself abandoned by the town that he’s faithfully served when it is rumored that a fearsome gunman will be arriving at noon to seek revenge on the man who previously sent him to prison.

Below, we have the final scene of High Noon, in which the cowardly townspeople finally come to support Marshal Kane. Kane, disgusted by their actions, can only throw away his star and leave town. Even without dialogue, Cooper lets you know exactly what is going through Kane’s mind. It’s a great scene from a great film featuring a great actor and directed by a great filmmaker.

The Eric Roberts Collection: The Chaos Experiment (dir by Philippe Martinez)

Posted on April 29, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2009’s The Chaos Experiment, Val Kilmer stars as James Pettis, a twitchy man who shows up at the offices of a Michigan newspaper and says that he wants them to publish an editorial he has written. The editorial is about global warming (yawn) and the danger of humanity going extinct (double yawn). Pettis goes on to explain that he has trapped six people in a steam room and that he has turned the temperature up to 130 degrees, the better to demonstrate what destroying the environment is doing to humanity.

Cynical detective Manicni (Armanda Assante) is called and he listens to Pettis’s story. Mancini has some doubts as to whether or not Pettis is who he says he is. As Pettis describes what is happening in the steam room, Mancini comes to suspect that Pettis is either lying or else the murders happened a while ago. Pettis, for his part, seems to grow more and more delusional as he speaks to Manicni.

When we’re not listening to Mancini and Pettis, we’re watching six unfortunate people trapped in steam room. They are played by Eric Roberts, Patrick Muldoon, Megan Brown, Eve Mauro, Quinn Duffy, and Cordelia Reynolds. They start out as a friendly group but, once it becomes apparent that they’re trapped in the room, they lose it. They start turning on and attacking each other. The first to die is killed while strangling another hostage. The second is taken out by a unseen person with a nail gun. Cast as a former football player who claims to be from “Dallas-Fort Worth,” Eric Roberts goes from being the voice of reason to being a paranoid wreck. Meanwhile, the viewer is left to figure out whether or not any of this is happening or if it’s all just in Pettis’s mind.

I kind of cringed when Pettis said he had written an editorial about global warming but the environmental stuff is just a red herring. The film is actually about the cat-and-mouse game between Pettis and Detective Mancini and the investigation into whether or not Pettis has actually trapped six people in a steam room. It’s an intriguing premise and Val Kilmer gives a surprisingly committed performance as the unstable Pettis. Unfortunately, whenever the film cuts to the people in the steam room, it gets bogged down in all the usual Saw-style dramatics. I appreciate that the film found room for Eric Roberts to give a real performance (and Roberts does a good job, going from being affable to murderous over the course of the movie) but, even at the time when this film first came out, the people-trapped-in-a-room thing had been done to death and the scenes in steam room were ultimately a bit too repetitive to be as effective as they needed to be. That said, the film does end with a nice twist and it did hold my attention.

If nothing else, this is your only chance to see Val Kilmer, Armand Assante, Patrick Muldoon, and Eric Roberts, all in the same movie. That counts for something.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed: