Customer Reviews

Rainbow Drive [VHS]

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This movie is better than Sunset Grill, another marginal, grim, murky film in which Peter Weller plays a tough, honest loner taking on a powerful criminal conspiracy. But it may be less interesting than that strangely quirky, offbeat movie. Rainbow Drive is a thoroughly undistinguished dud, which is especially disappointing given its talented, recognizable cast and its origin in a Roderick Thorp novel.

Waking at dawn in the bed of a married woman (Kathryn Harrold), Weller, as the chief of detectives in Hollywood, hears strange sounds coming from the house next door. He discovers five dead bodies, neatly killed in their beds, sees a man running away, and fruitlessly gives chase to a fleeing car. By the time he returns to the crime scene, the "big city" cops - represented by a blowhard chief running for mayor and his ice-cold lackey assistant (David Caruso) - have already moved in on the case and frozen out Weller's local office. A woman's body mysteriously disappears from the house and shows up in another location, the four remaining, male bodies in the house are quickly written off as victims of a drug-related gang crime, and Weller's partner (Bruce Weitz) soon dies in a car crash after having tried to warn Weller off the case.

Seething with suspicions about his partner's death and what appears to be a big-scale cover-up, Weller digs into the case. But he is hampered by warnings from higher-ups to keep away and by not being able to divulge that he had discovered the five bodies at the house because that would also mean revealing that he had been with the married woman next door. He is fed clues by a lovely, intelligent woman (Sela Ward) who tells him she is a psychiatrist "profiling" the mass killing. Despite the lock-down on access to the case, she seems to have free run of the crime scene and the case files. Weller enlists the reluctant help of a sympathetic but cowardly coroner and of a fidgety but dutiful cop, who provides various wiretapping and other gadgets (like a "pen gun" more fitting in a low-budget spy film). Along the way, Weller leaves unanswered phone messages for Harrold, takes a late-night swim in the pool at his house (how did he afford that?), shares a kiss and a hug on the couch with Ward, finds his house is bugged, and survives a clumsy attempt on his life.

The trail leads to a sleazy nightclub. It turns out to be a money laundering "front" for unidentified corrupt activities of a high-society big-shot, who is so evil as to have "butchered" the people in the house, including an intimate, for attempting blackmail. Weller tracks down and beats the truth out of a punk who sold out the others in the house but apparently has managed to stay alive by hiding evidence as "insurance" (that conveniently only Weller gets him to admit and then finds). An FBI agent surfaces, claims to be conducting a long-term investigation, and tries to warn Weller off. But he slugs the agent and bulls ahead alone into a final confrontation and gun battle. It leaves a pile of dead bodies, except for the big-shot, who slips away. After the FBI bursts on the scene, declares Weller's use of a wire "illegal," and berates him for blowing the chance to nail the top person, Weller shakes his head and walks away, with the cynical exit line, "The important ones never get caught." The credits roll.

This movie is more serious and less uneven than Sunset Grill, which came off as weirdly tongue-in-cheek. Weller looks quite different than he did there, here as a clean-cut, suit-and-tie chief. Again, he does an adequate, straight-ahead job. Popular supporting actors are on hand, like Caruso, Ward, Weitz, Harrold, and Megan Mullally.

But the talent is wasted in a weak, flat, unoriginal effort at a "gritty crime thriller." The story is choppy, trite, and undeveloped. Weller's "investigation" is flimsy and confusing, and his tactics are unprofessional and self-defeating. The movie lacks wit or feeling. For a movie set in "Hollywood," the film offers nothing more than dirty, dingy shots that seem like they could have come from many other places. The music by Tangerine Dream is barely noticeable and completely unmemorable.

None of the characters is interesting or engaging, and it is hard to follow who they all are. Weller's brooding, opaque character soon becomes tiresome. Caruso and Ward do good jobs, but they have only thin, limited roles. Harrold is a glorified extra, given nothing more to do than look pretty, fill out a nightgown, and banter with Weller in one trivial scene. Mullally fares only slightly better in the bit part of (I think) a loudmouth friend of the murdered woman. (I did not even see the cute blonde on the box cover in the movie.) Here, Weitz wears loud, checkered sport coats, chews with his mouth open, and by all appearances is a spineless, good-for-nothing smart-aleck whose only contributions are to keep repeating that "Rainbow Drive is not our case" and to suddenly blurt out that he sold out his badge years ago by letting a VIP hit-and-run driver go before other cops arrived. Yet we are supposed to care about this nothing, amateurishly drawn character, who the movie belatedly and implausibly tries to turn into a hero by saying he "knew something" and was "tracking down a lead" when he died.

TV Guide billed this as a "whodunit." It is more like a "who-didn't-dun-it" and a "why'd-they-bother-to-make-it." Everything in the movie, including the tone, look, feel, settings, and characters, exists only to conjure up a superficial effect -- a cynical, bad attitude and image of a cesspool of corruption. All that is accomplished in the end is an uninspired, shallow, murky, disorganized, depressing, pointless police procedural that is not meaningful or satisfying but instead merely goes through the motions.

Peter Weller rules starring as a correct cop on an unstable road.It's a must see at a great price!!!