Customer Reviews

Traces of Red [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

One hell of a thriller with more twists than a cork screw. A well crafted movie with a fine cast. Not drenched in dark photography like many of today`s films. A good marriage between the music and the film, in that it complemented rather than obstructed the story. Music by Graeme Revell, released in 2002.

This movie is interesting and plenty of suspense as to who did what. I enjoyed this movie as different to the others and is worth buying and keeping. James Belushi plays an excellent part and suits him down to his toes. I enjoyed the other shows of hes and I must say some roles make you feel your right there with him.

While the killer in this plot has gotten himself a little confused between 'The Lipstick Killer' and 'The Zodiac', he seems to be the only character with a defined direction. Belushi, obviously out of his comfort zone, plays the kind of detective you pray will never be investigating your murder unless your goal is to be an unsolved mystery! Bracco on the other hand does seem to understand her character, unfortunately not how to play her.

The plot is totally predictable if you can manage to stay focused on it, but still mildly entertaining if you can ignore the bad casting decisions. With that said, it's one beacon of light comes from the highly underrated Faye Grant whos role is far too small to save the movie as a whole. Perhaps in Bracco's role we'd have a whole new ballgame!

If you're looking for a steamy, edge of your seat thriller, keep looking, but if you just want a little diversion from reality for awhile, let Faye Grant show you how to steal a scene with this one!

This interminable wannabe thriller set in Palm Beach and directed by Andy Wolk has many distinguishing features, none of them very good. Probably the best thing is Lorraine Bracco using her slow speech patterns to add character touches to her femme fatale role. However Wolk inexplicably doesn't know what to do with her, and eventually she gets shunted to the side, so he can bore us with the labrynthine plot convolutions of a search for a serial killer who over-applies Yves St Laurent ruby red lipstick clown-like to his victims. Wolk miscasts James Belushi as a womanising detective, as if his bull manner and loud-voice would appeal to women, though since the victims are all women associated with Belushi, that may be motivation enough. Belushi is the kind of policeman that litters in the street and in his own home, and has a fondness for faux big band music - Dinah Washington slaughtering These Foolish Things. One wonders if making some swamp bad guys all overweight is an attempt to scale down Belushi's own stockiness, and he pales next to Bracco in their scenes together, she making him look even more amateurish. The screenplay by Jim Piddock is full of impossible lines - "In Palm Beach there are 3 lives: public, private and secret", "time was money and the girls were bigtime", "Don't start asking me about my experiences. You could become one of them", "Don't try to make me into something I'm not. How do you know what you're not?", and "You're not who you thought you were, boy". The contextual assumption of Belushi's opening narration is taken from Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, but more troubling is the connection Piddock wants to make between child abuse and womanising. The narrative actually improves about ¾ of the way in when Belushi's partner, Tony Goldwyn takes over the investigation in Key West. He matches up better with Bracco, and a sex scene is more convincing than the ones in which Belushi participates, partly because Goldwyn is a more attractive specimen. Although Goldwyn doesn't have a leading man persona, he at least suggests more emotional depth and psychological dimension. Wolk gives Bracco's office a huge carpet with lipstick pattern, has her leave an apple in a fruit bowl with a bite taken out of it, puts heavy breathing on his soundtrack, and casts Edgar Allan Poe IV in a supporting role.

I just rated this 5 stars because it only had 1 star and now it will have three.