William H. Macy is a film critic caught in a spider web of deceit in this TNT original, co-written by Macy, a self-referential noir in which Macy speaks directly into the camera to us, letting us know he's not such a bad guy even as he accidentally kills his mistress, brains his blackmailer, robs a bank and screws the head investigator's wife. Macy is so likable he makes any number of lame situations work, and the disjunction between his relationship with us and with the characters on-screen is pretty amusing. There is even some pretty amusing subtext about the critical constipation and impotency of critics, but it never drills very much beneath the ironically detached veneer to be more than lightly satisfying.
Review of A Slight Case of Murder
A Slight Case of Murder
(1999 TV Movie)
Lightly amusing--pretty good for a TNT original
15 February 2005
Warning: Spoilers