Transplanting the plot of 1947's 'The Big Clock' from its newspaper setting to the netherworld of Washington politics was a good idea, but for all its nerve-wracking paranoia the remake isn't half as entertaining as the original. Kevin Costner (rarely out of his glistening white uniform) portrays a Pentagon naval officer assigned by the Secretary of Defense to investigate the murder of the Secretary's mistress (who was Costner's lover as well), and complications arise after the bewildered officer begins to find all the evidence pointing to himself as the primary suspect. It's all an elaborate frame-up, of course, but because the true identity of the killer is never in question the film has to rely instead on routine (and often gratuitous) doses of violence and sex to hold the viewer's interest (and bring the story up to date from its original 1947 setting). Costner plays a refreshingly fallible hero, and the government corruption sub-plot is certainly topical, but the illogical and unnecessary epilogue comes close to spoiling the rest of the film, by adding one plot twist too many to an already cluttered scenario.
Review of No Way Out
