Not only do you learn a great deal about electronic equipment and other technical aspects, but the plot is masterfully crafted, with many twists and turns. Your interest never wanes. The detectives' investigations often turn on the minutest pieces of evidence, found either by accident or good hard police work, take your pick. The drama and suspense never waver and build up until the final breathless half-minute. The only thing missing is Det. Olivia Benson being decorated for sticking with a case that her colleagues were all too ready to give up on, and persevering until a child's life was saved -- and one more minute could have been too late.
Reviews
3 Reviews
Bullets Over Broadway
(1994)
"I'm NOT An Artist -- Thank God!"
9 May 2001
Warning: Spoilers
These last two words were what SHOULD have been added to the last line of the film to make this excellent movie even better. John Cusack, in one of his better roles, plays an aspiring playwright during the 1920s, and considers himself to be a great one--although he later learns that he really isn't. Like his Marxist-inclined intellectual friend Flender (Rob Reiner, looking very much the part), Cusack thinks that art is of supreme importance, perhaps even more important than human life itself. Discussing art in a Greenwich Village cafe, Reiner gives the analogy of a burning building: if you could rush in and save only one of two things--a human being or the last known copy of Shakespeare's works, which would you save? His answer, of course, is Shakespeare's works. Why say such a horrible thing? Because to intellectuals, art "lives." You'd have no right to "deprive the world of this great art" just to save the life of "an anonymous human being," he says. Cusack agrees. But this belief is put to the test when in order to save a work of art, gangster Cheech (well-played by Chazz Palmentieri) actually commits murder. Cusack then realizes that no work of art is worth a human life after all. At this point, Cusack says, "I'm NOT an artist." This, I think, is the film's underlying, Dostoevskian theme: that because intellectuals deal in art and ideas, they place far too much value on such abstractions, and correspondingly too little value on human life. Didn't the 20th century prove how deadly this insane notion can be? Now we see Deep Greens telling us that the life of a human being is no more valuable than the life of a tree or a dog! I wish all the Deep Greens would watch this fine movie and be disabused of their inhumane notions. For my part, I can also say that if art is to be considered more important than human life, "I'm not an artist--Thank God."
Flesh and Bone
(1993)
Truly Dostoevskian, and A Darned Good Film Too
16 April 2001
I'm not sure how many other fans of this excellent film realize that it's really an argument against determinism--in this case, biological determinism, but it could also be used as a valid refutation of environmental determinism. Father/murderer James Caan believes that since he himself is evil, and since his son's blood is the same as his, then his son Arlis (Dennis Quaid) must also have evil tendencies--as if Arlis is powerless to act otherwise. Arlis even buys into this nonsense: "It's not in your blood"; "If you're born to it..." He lives a solitary life, as if he's afraid that establishing a close relationship with someone would endanger them, because of the evil taint of his bloodline and his consequent evil potential--which isn't really there at all. But he realizes at the end that we all make our own decisions by means of our free will, and that our bloodline has nothing to do with that process. ("That's nothing. It's only blood.") Dostoevsky knew this too, when in CRIME AND PUNISHMENT or THE POSSESSED (I forget which) he shows how the revolutionaries of that era believed that "the environment" determines all human action--and he also saw how dangerous this idea is. The 20th century was a grim validation of his prophecies.
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