Q&A (1990, directed by Sidney Lumet)

Posted on May 1, 2026 by Jedadiah Leland

Al Reilly (Timothy Hutton) is the son of a New York cop and a former cop himself. Having put himself through law school, Reilly is now an assistant district attorney. When Reilly is assigned the case of Mike Brennan (Nick Nolte), a popular detective who claims to have killed a Puerto Rican drug dealer in self-defense, everyone assumes that Al will come down on the side of Brennan. Instead, Al discovers that Brennan is corrupt and that the shooting is connected to a drug lord named Bobby Texador (Armand Assante). Bobby just happens to be married to Nancy (Jenny Lumet), who is Al’s ex-girlfriend.

Nobody was better at capturing the hustle and the gritty language of New York City politics than Sidney Lumet and some of the best scenes in Q&A are the ones where characters like Al, Brennan, and even Bobby are just hanging out and being the New Yorkers that they are. The dialogue in those scenes crackle with cynicism, as everyone knows better than to trust anything that anyone says. Coming after Serpico and The Prince of the City, this was Lumet’s third film to focus on corruption in the NYPD. It was a world that Lumet obviously knew well and he brings the eye for detail that a story like this needs to hold our attention.

Unfortunately, the plot of Q&A is often too dependent on melodrama and coincidence. Asking us to believe that Bobby would just happen to be married to Al’s ex is asking a lot. As opposed to the documentary feel of Serpico and especially The Prince of the City, Q&A feels like an extended episode of a cop show, with little of the moral ambiguity that Lumet brought to his best films. Q&A is good but its never as good as it could have been.

As an actress Jenny Lumet doesn’t really have the depth necessary to make Nancy a believable character. (Francis Ford Coppola wasn’t the only director to miscast his daughter in 1990.) But the rest of the cast is uniformly excellent, with Luis Guzman, Fyvush Finkel, Lee Richardson, Paul Calderon, Charles S. Dutton, and Patrick O’Neal all turning in good supporting performances. Of the leads, Hutton is often overshadowed by the more flamboyant performances of Nolte and Assante but, overall, he does a good job of anchoring the film’s story. Nolte is excellent in the role of Mike Brennan. It’s just too bad that the film eventually turns him into a standard movie villain.

Sidney Lumet would return to theme of New York political corruption with the underrated Night Falls On Manhattan.

Icarus File No. 27: Con Man (dir by Bruce Caulk)

Posted on April 28, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Originally filmed in 2010 but not released until 2018, Con Man is one of the strangest vanity projects that I’ve ever seen.

Originally entitled Minkow, Con Man tells the story of Barry Minkow. When Minkow was a teenager, he started a carpet cleaning business and he quickly learned how to both promote himself and how to lie about how much money he was making. The media ate up the story of the teenager became a millionaire by cleaning carpets. His father (Mark Hamill) was proud of him. His mother (Talia Shire) worried that he was moving away from God. A local mobster (Armand Assante) decided to get involved. It was eventually discovered that Barry was kiting checks, lying to insurance companies, and massively defrauding both his investors and his employees. After being busted by the FBI (represented here by James Caan), Barry Minkow was sent to prison.

In the film, teenage Barry Minkow is played by a young, handsome, and charismatic Justin Baldoni. When Barry gets out of jail, he’s suddenly been transformed into …. well, Barry Minkow. That’s right. Barry Minkow plays himself. Needless to say, Barry Minkow looks nothing like Justin Baldoni. It’s not just that the two men are different ages. It’s also that there’s no way to imagine Justin Baldoni transforming into the gargoyle that is Barry Minkow.

In prison, Barry Minkow is converted to Christianity by a prisoner named Peanut (Ving Rhames). After Minkow serves his sentence, he not only helps the FBI track down other con artists but he becomes the pastor of his local church. Despite his past, everyone loves and trusts Barry Minkow. Everyone talks about how charismatic he is, despite the fact that the adult Barry Minkow delivers his lines in a flat monotone and looks like he should be sitting over the entrance of a cathedral. People who suspect that they’ve been a victim of financial fraud start to come to Barry, asking him for advice. The always humble Barry is concerned that he’ll let people down but, in the end, even James Caan says that Barry is a great guy. “I’m doing the work of God!” Barry proclaims.

Yes, the film is fueled by pure ego. Unfortunately, it took more than ego to pay the bills so Minkow embezzled money from his own church, stole money from his congregation, and resorted to his old track of “clipping” checks to finance the whole thing. Shortly after the film was completed, Minkow was arrested and sent back to prison. (A hot mic caught Minkow bragging to James Caan about how he financed the film. After his arrest, Minkow denied he had ever said that and dared anyone with proof to turn it over. The film’s director proceeded to do just that. Barry Minkow was not only a criminal. He was a stupid criminal.)

As for the film, it sat in limbo for eight years. Eventually, talking head interview with Minkow’s actual victims talking about how much they disliked Barry were sprinkled throughout the film. (Shortly before Minkow starts playing himself, we hear one of his business partners say that everyone told him not to play himself.) The original film ended on a triumphant note. The new film — which was retitled Con Man — ended with real people talking about Barry Minkow going back to jail and casting doubt as to whether or not Barry ever even knew a prisoner named Peanut.

The film is a vanity project and not a very good one. Minkow is a terrible actor and, just in case we forget that fact, he reminds us by trying to hold the screen opposite James Caan and Ving Rhames. (Even Elisabeth Rohm manages to outact him.) As bad as the film is, the story behind it is endlessly fascinating. Barry Minkow was determined to become a star. (Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can was an obvious inspiration.) Instead, he went back to prison and his vanity project was transformed into a roast. And it probably couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy.

Previous Icarus Files:

The Eric Roberts Collection: The Night Never Sleeps (dir by Fred Carpenter)

Posted on April 4, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2012’s The Night Never Sleeps takes place over the course of one very long night in a New York city.

Sgt. Cavanaugh (Dan Brennan) is a tough and plain-spoken cop, the type who might not be great with pleasantries but who is a good enough policeman that he’s not going to let anyone stop him from avenging the deaths of the officers working under him. Each murder leads to Cavanaugh digging deeper and deeper into the city’s underworld. In between phone calls from his ex-wife (played by Eliza Roberts, wife of Eric) and meetings with the skeptical Inspector Romanelli (Armand Assante), Cavanaugh pursues a bloodthirsty hitman (Russ Camarda) and his boss.

The Night Never Sleeps is a low-budget police procedural, one that actually works far better than it has any right to. There’s hardly a cliche that isn’t present and there’s as few scenes where the nonstop “tough talk” verges on self-parody but the actors — especially Dan Brennan — all give good performances and the fact that the action was actually shot on location gives the film an appropriate gritty feel.

As for Eric Roberts, he plays a pimp whose cheerful manner hides a dangerous temperament. This is one of Roberts’s better cameo appearances. Not only does he seem to be invested in the performance but his character is also central to the plot. The film makes good use of Eric Robert’s off-center smile. On the one hand, he seems friendly, or at least as friendly as a pimp can be. On the other hand, there’s just enough fidgety nervousness beneath his amiable manner to indicate only as fool would turn their back on him.

The Night Never Sleeps is a flawed film but it still held my attention.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Lords of Flatbush (1974, directed by Stephen F. Verona and Martin Davidson)

Posted on June 14, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 1958 and four Brooklyn teenagers, all members of a largely non-violent street gang called The Lords of Flatbush, have enough grease in their hair to start a city-wide kitchen fire. It’s their senior year of high school. Chico (Perry King) tries to hook up with a new, blonde transfer student (Susan Blakely). Butchey (Henry Winkler) makes everyone laugh and hides the fact that he’s secretly really smart. Stanley (Sylvester Stallone) deals with his impending marriage to Frannie (Maria Smith). Everyone has to grow up eventually but at least the Lords of Flatbush will always have their memories and probably their leather jackets.

Nostalgia films that were extremely popular in the 70s, as the baby boomers were already starting to mythologize their youth. Lords of Flatbush is very much about that nostalgia, leading to a film that feels sincere but which is also pretty predictable. With its coming-of-age storylines and its mix of drama and comedy, Lords of Flatbush owes an obvious debt to American Graffiti. The movie, like its characters, is likable but not exactly memorable. Today, it’s really only known because it featured early performances from Sylvester Stallone and Henry Winkler. Winkler got his signature role as the Fonz on Happy Days largely based on his performance as Butchey, though Butchey is nowhere near as cool as the Fonz. Pre-Rocky, this movie was Stallone’s calling card in Hollywood and he rewrote enough of his own lines that he got an additional dialogue credit. Stallone actually gives a pretty good performance, even if he is obviously closer to 30 than 18.

Stallone’s best scene is when Stanley is trying to buy an engagement ring and Frannie insists that he buy one that costs $1,600. For the first time, Stanley realizes that getting married means committing to something other than hanging out with his friends and working on his car. Stanley buys the ring but threatens the jewelry store owner afterwards, telling him to never show Frannie a $1,600 ring again.

The Lords of Flatbush is a film about the past but it’s mostly interesting due to the future of its stars.

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:

Funny Money (2006, directed by Leslie Greif)

Posted on February 4, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Henry Perkins (Chevy Chase), the most boring man alive, has a job making wax fruit while his wife (Penelope Ann Miller) wants to make a living through drawing naked men. (I guess that’s fair considering how many men make their living by drawing naked women.) On Henry’s birthday, Henry spots a briefcase just like his and decides to swap them. At home, Henry discovers that his new briefcase contains five million dollars!

Henry wants to move to Europe immediately. But every time he and his wife try to leave their home, something occurs. A menacing cop (Armanda Assante) shows up. Henry’s friends drop by to celebrate his birthday. The Romanian mob makes an appearance, looking for their money. All Henry and his wife want to do is steal the money but instead, they spend a night dealing with false identities, physical comedy, and slapstick humor.

Funny Money was based on a stage play and it seems like the sort of thing that would have been hilarious if viewed live, with everyone running on and off the stage and some genuine suspense about who was going to show up next. It does not translate well to film. This would have been a good vehicle for Chase in the 80s or even the 90s but, by the time the movie was made, Chase seemed old and tired. Penelope Ann Miller is never convincing as Chase’s wife. (Someone should have tried to reunite Chase with Beverly D’Angelo or even Goldie Hawn for this movie.) The main problem is that the supporting characters are never as funny or as quick-on-their-feet as the film needs them to be. Armand Assante doesn’t seem to know he’s in a comedy. Even a reliable actor like Christopher McDonald is let down by the film’s script and direction. That’s too bad because the material had potential. While it’s not a disaster like Cops and Robbersons, Funny Money is still never funny enough.

An Offer You Can Take or Leave #13: Hoffa (dir by Danny DeVito)

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1992 film, Hoffa, opens in 1975, with two men sitting in the backseat of a station wagon. One of the men is the controversial labor leader, Jimmy Hoffa (Jack Nicholson). The other is his longtime best friend and second-in-command, Bobby Ciaro (Danny DeVito). The two men are parked outside of a roadside diner. They’re waiting for someone who is late. Jimmy complains about being treated with such disrespect and comments that this would have never happened earlier. Jimmy asks Bobby if he has his gun. Bobby reveals that he does. Jimmy asks him if he’s sure that there’s a loaded gun in the diner, as well. Bobby goes to check.

Jimmy Hoffa, of course, was a real person. (Al Pacino just received an Oscar nomination for playing him in The Irishman.) He was a trucker who became a labor leader and who was eventually elected president of the Teamsters Union. He was a prominent opponent of the Kennedys and that infamous footage of him being interrogated by Bobby Kennedy at a Senate hearing seems to sneak its way into almost every documentary ever made about organized crime in the 50s. Hoffa was linked to the Mafia and was eventually sent to prison. He was freed by the Nixon administration, under the condition that he not have anything to do with Teamster business. When he disappeared in 1975, he was 62 years old and it was rumored that he was planning on trying to take over his old union. Everyone from the mob to the CIA has been accused of having had Hoffa killed.

Bobby Ciaro, however, was not a real person. Apparently, he was a composite character who was created by Hoffa’s screenwriter, David Mamet, as a way for the audience to get to know the enigmatic Jimmy Hoffa. Bobby is presented as being Hoffa’s best friend and, for the most part, we experience Jimmy Hoffa through his eyes. We get to know Jimmy as Bobby gets to know him but we still never really feel as if we know the film’s version of Jimmy Hoffa. He yells a lot and he tells Bobby Kennedy (a snarling Kevin Anderson) to go to Hell and he talks a lot about how everything he’s doing is for the working man but we’re never really sure whether he’s being sincere or if he’s just a demagogue who is mostly interested in increasing his own power. Bobby Ciaro is certainly loyal to him and since Bobby is played by the film’s director, it’s hard not to feel that the film expects us to share Bobby’s admiration. But, as a character, Hoffa never really seems to earn anyone’s loyalty. We’re never sure what’s going on inside of Hoffa’s head. Jack Nicholson is always entertaining to watch and it’s interesting to see him play a real person as opposed to just another version of his own persona but his performance in Hoffa is almost totally on the surface. With the exception of a few scenes early in the film, there’s doesn’t seem to be anything going on underneath all of the shouting.

The majority of Hoffa is told via flashback. Scenes of Hoffa and Bobby in the film’s present are mixed with scenes of Hoffa and Bobby first meeting and taking over the Teamsters. Sometimes, the structure of the film is a bit cumbersome but there are a few scenes — especially during the film’s first thirty minutes — that achieve a certain visual poetry. There’s a scene where Hoffa helps to change a man’s flat tire while selling him on the union and the combination of falling snow, the dark city street, and Hoffa talking about the working man makes the scene undeniably effective. The scenes where Hoffa spars with Bobby Kennedy are also effective, with Nicholson projecting an intriguing blue collar arrogance as he belittles the abrasively ivy league Bobby. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie doesn’t live up to those scenes. By the time Hoffa becomes a rich and influential man, you realize that the film isn’t really sure what it wants to say about Jimmy Hoffa. Does it want to condemn Hoffa for getting seduced by power or does it want to excuse Hoffa’s shady dealings as just being what he had to do to protect the men in his union? The film truly doesn’t seem to know.

Hoffa is definitely not an offer that you shouldn’t refuse but, at the same time, it’s occasionally effective. A few of the scenes are visually appealing and the cast is full of character actors like John C. Reilly, J.T. Walsh, Frank Whaley, and Nicholas Pryor. It’s not a disaster like The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Hoffa is an offer that you can take or leave.

Previous Offers You Can’t (or Can) Refuse:

Fatal Instinct (1993, directed by Carl Reiner)

Posted on June 9, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Ned Ravine (Armand Assante) is a cop who is also a lawyer. His shtick is to make an arrest and then defend that person in court. He’s married to Lana (Kate Nelligan), who is having an affair with a mechanic named Frank (Christopher McDonald). Lana has taken out a life insurance policy on Ned, one that has a triple indemnity clause. If he’s shot on a northbound train and then falls off and drowns in a nearby stream, Lana and Frank will make a lot of money. However, Lana and Frank are not the only people who want to kill Ned Ravine. One of Ned’s former clients, Max Shady (James Remar), has just been released from prison and is seeking revenge. The main reason why Ned hasn’t figured out that everyone is trying to kill him is because he’s been distracted by the seductive Lola (Sean Young), a client who asked him to look over some legal papers and who has an improbable connection to Lana.

As you might guess by the plot and Carl Reiner’s directorial credit, Fatal Instinct is a spoof of detective movies, with the majority of the jokes being inspired by Basic Instinct, the remake of Cape Fear, Double Indemnity, and Body Heat. How much you laugh will depend on how well you know those films. There’s a scene in Ned’s office where Ned notices that Lola isn’t wearing panties. He helpfully produces a pair from inside his desk and hand them to her. In 1994, that scene was funny because Basic Instinct and whether or not Sharon Stone was aware of how her famous interrogation scene was being filmed were still a huge part of the pop cultural conversation. Today, it might just seem weird.

Carl Reiner has always been an uneven filmmaker and that trend continues in Fatal Instinct, where he tries to do to erotic thrillers what Mel Brooks did to westerns and Airplane! did to disaster films. Unfortunately, Reiner often gets bogged down by the film’s plot, which should really be the last thing anyone should be worried about when it comes to a spoof like this. Some of the jokes are funny and some of them aren’t but, because Reiner doesn’t duplicate the joke-every-minute style of a film like Airplane!, there’s a lot more time to think about the jokes that fall flat.

Fatal Instinct does have a good cast, featuring a lot of actors who probably should have become bigger stars than they did. I especially liked Kate Nelligan’s and Christopher McDonald’s performances as the two triple indemnity conspirators. Sherilyn Fenn plays Ned’s loyal secretary and seeing her give such a fresh and likable performance in this otherwise uneven film makes me regret even more that, outside of Twin Peaks, she never really got the roles that she deserved.

Fever (1991, directed by Larry Elikann)

Posted on March 18, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Ray (Armand Assante) is a formerly viscous ex-con who has just gotten out of prison and is now determined to go straight and live on the right side of the law. After spending nearly a decade behind bars, all he wants to do is to reunite with his girlfriend, Lacy (Marcia Gay Harden), and make her his wife. However, there’s a problem. While Ray was locked up, Lacy moved on. She’s now engaged to Elliott (Sam Neill), a liberal attorney who, unlike Ray, is a pacifist. Even though Lacy is still attracted to Ray, she does not want to get back together with him.

Unfortunately, there’s a second problem. Ray may have gone straight but his former criminal associates don’t believe him. They want Ray to help them pull off a major crime and when Ray says that is no longer his thing, they react by kidnapping Lacy. If Ray ever wants to see Lacy again, he’s now got to return to his life of crime.

There’s also a third problem. Ray may be an experienced criminal but Elliott insists on tagging along with him while he’s following the kidnappers’s orders. So now, Ray not only has to commit several crimes but he has to do it with an inexperienced partner who doesn’t even believe in firing guns!

Fever is one of those HBO films that used to show up all the time on cable in the 90s. I watched it a few times back in the day, just because I was a teenage boy and the movie featured a good deal of nudity. Even at that time, though, I thought it was a slow and frequently boring movie. Rewatching it for this review, I was shocked to discover that it was even slower than I remembered. It seems like it takes forever for Ray and Elliott to finally team up and for the movie to get going. Though the plot description may make it sound like a buddy comedy, it’s actually a very tough and grim picture. Armand Assante and Sam Neill are not actors known for their light touch and they both give very serious and gritty performances. Unfortunately, the film’s pace never really matched the intensity of its stars and the film’s storyline isn’t strong enough to hold up under scrutiny. Once you start to wonder if Ray would really let Elliott tag along with him, the movie itself falls apart.

Armand Assante is a good actor who rarely seems to appear in good films. Fever is a good example of that. Assante gives an excellent and complex performance (and both Sam Neill and Marcia Gay Harden are pretty good too) but Fever itself never really clicks.

Horror Film Review: Smile (dir by Francesco Gasperoni)

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

One of the most often repeated stories about the tribes that live along the Amazon River is that, when they first met “civilized” explorers, they refused to have their pictures taken because they feared that that the camera would steal their souls.

Now, I’m not sure if I believe that story. It sounds like one of those stories that’s just a little bit too perfect and metaphorical. But, it’s still a neat idea because, when you think about, cameras really are fascinating devices. They literally freeze time and they produce images that are full of details that you might have originally missed.

To me, a camera with supernatural powers seems like the natural subject for a horror movie. Obviously, Italian director Francesco Gasperoni agreed with me because he directed Smile, a 2009 film about a camera with supernatural powers.

Smile deals with a group of European college students who are taking a road trip through Morocco. Our eight friends are all equally attractive, equally shallow, and equally destined for a bad end. Seriously, as soon as they first appear, driving through the desert in a jeep and doing bong hits, you know that they’re all doomed.

Clarissa (Harriet McMasters-Green) is determined to photograph the entire trip but, when her camera is stolen, she’s forced to search for a replacement. Luckily, she comes across a mysterious man (played by veteran actor Armand Assante) who is willing to give her an old camera. Of course, Clarissa accepts his offer and, needless to say, the camera is like totally cursed. It turns out that Assante is a former crime scene photographer and anyone who has his or her picture taken with the camera will subsequently die…

Smile is hardly a perfect film but I enjoyed it for what it was. The characters are just shallow enough that it’s not upsetting when they all start getting killed and Gasperoni makes good use of the desolate Moroccan setting. The idea of the haunted camera is a clever one and Assante is properly menacing. While the film might occasionally be somewhat predictable and the film’s plot is pretty much dependent upon every character doing the stupidest thing possible, the film does feature an effectively mean-spirited ending.

(Again, it helps that none of the characters in the film are all that likable.)

As much as I was hoping that it would be a throw back to the classic Italian horror films of Bava, Argento, and Fulci, Smile really can’t begin to compare. That said, Smile is entertaining for what it is. At the very least, it won’t steal your soul.