Product Details

• Actors: Nick Nolte, Timothy Hutton, Armand Assante, Patrick O'Neal, Lee Richardson
• Directors: Sidney Lumet
• Writers: Sidney Lumet, Alan Smithee, Edwin Torres
• Producers: Arnon Milchan, Burtt Harris, Lilith Jacobs, Patrick Wachsberger
• Format: PAL
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
• Region: Region 2 (Read more about DVD formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Run Time: 132 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000089ASH
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #300,020 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Q & A [Region 2]" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

A grim, disheartening view of the underside of city life, Q & A is a legal drama with a disturbing twist. Not exactly a whodunit--the guilt of policeman Nick Nolte is established early on--the plot follows the closing of the circle around him. Leading the murder investigation is Timothy Hutton's young, idealistic district attorney Al Reilly, who finds himself battling a fraudulent and cynical culture. Racism, corruption, and political machinations are all added to the mix, resulting in a film that is just a little too dense and slow-moving to capture the imagination.

Director Sidney Lumet creates a feeling of enveloping darkness around Hutton, who slowly manages to let the light in and bring the truth to the surface. With an obviously small budget, the film has more of a made-for-television feel than that of a big blockbuster and some of the performances err too much on the side of cliché. The concept of the New York melting pot is fairly effectively dismissed by the film, painting a picture of distrust between communities that often spills into violence, both verbal and physical. Not quite as unremittingly bleak as Harvey Kietel's Bad Lieutenant, Q & A is still a tough, dark piece of cinema. --Phil Udell

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Props to Edwin Torres, May 26, 2003

By	"problem-addict" (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Q & A (DVD)

While I agree with some reviewers who felt that this film started off strongly then fell off a bit as it progressed, I have to take issue with a couple of reviews that stated (not verbatim) that the racial politics of NYC as depicted in the film do not accurately reflect real life. One reviewer (the Amazon critic, I believe) went so far as to refer to the race dynamics in Q&A as far-fetched.

Wellllll.. as a Latino, raised in the Big Apple but having spent much time up and down the East Coast, I have to respectfully disagree on that one. Granted, Q & A does take liberties with the interpersonal-relationships-as-microcosm-of-the-social-picture thing, but the actors, some of whose performances go waaaay over the top, are more to blame than the story itself .

The film is based on a book by Edwin Torres, who also authored After Hours and Carlito's Way, both of which provided the basis for the Al Pacino starrer of the latter name. Torres, who grew up in Spanish Harlem, wrote these books while working as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan. He is now a Judge in Manhattan District Court. Point being that though the general suspicion and distrust among the races might appear to some of us in the 21st century as inaccurate, they are based on Torres' observations of the various peoples in and around Spanish Harlem during the 1960s and 70s, and are actually quite on target.

Anyone who has ever found themselves staring down the business end of a police department-issued service pistol during a routine traffic stop can attest to this. And I say this not as a gripe, or as a means of using this forum as an online soapbox, but to state that sometimes, just sometimes, the veracity of a world create for the screen but based on "real life" can only be determined by the subjective views of those who've experienced it, one way or the other. But don't take my word for it, ask a cop, white, black, Latino or whatever else, if race plays a part in how people treat him or her when they answer a call.

That said, Q & A does present a bleak, seemingly hopeless picture, but viewers shouldn't fault it for not providing cut-and-dried solutions to our social problems. Instead, watch it as a small slice of life, as experienced by a select few, and glean your own answers.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a classic like Serpico, but still good, June 10, 1999

By	Greekfreak (Pusan Korea (South)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Q & A [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Like Glengarry Glen Ross, the film itself is average--a typical Lumet film which rails against the system but does nothing to solve it's inherent problems. But it's chock-full of the best character performances of all time, featuring Nick Nolte in an oscar-worthy role of slimy (yet resourceful), racist pig flatfoot Mike Brennan, and also the terribly underrated Armand Assante as Bobby Texador, who steals the film.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A down-to-the-gut real, exciting, bold cop movie, May 5, 2003

By	Shashank Tripathi (Gadabout) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (VINE VOICE)

This review is from: Q & A (DVD)

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A truly gripping, action-packed and yet really moving cop film with a _raw_ complex plot (no other way to describe it) and some absolutely brilliant performances by Nick Nolte (as Brennan, a puritanical white cop too blurred by his convictions to see the error of his racist, reckless ways), Armand Assante (as a latin drug warlord and the antagonist of Nolte's character) and Timothy Hutton (as Riley, an ex-cop lawyer assigned now by the DA's office to investigate Nolte).

This is no LA Confidential or City Hall because there is much lesser of Hollywood here. Instead, expect some in-your-face narrative of police corruption, compromised idealism, racism, even a pithy take on homosexuality. The biggest surprise is the Puertorican druglord character played to the T by Armand Assante, right down to latin American quirks and verbal cadence - easily Oscar nomination material.

What's a review without some gripes though, so here. The one thing that befuddles the plot a little is the character of Riley's subplot romantic interest. Lumet's daughter herself played this role and I found her to be more than a little taut. This little apparition of an ex-love will have you wondering about what it means to the story otherwise (clue: not much) especially a reference to Riley being surprised on seeing his latin american girlfriend's father because he was black. Why this was anything special I do not know -- I'd be surprised to have a latin girlfriend for 2 years and then see her father and find out that he was black. If there was some highfalutin racism meme intended, I'd venture to say it fell flat on its foot.

Secondly, perhaps some (only some) scenes may be a tad overdone in terms of their dramatic rendering e.g., a totally unnecessary scene with a transvestite prostitute snitching away in front of the druglord or a scene with Nolte dealing with prostitutes and actually groping one of them to determine whether (s)he was a woman. Such needless scenes, and there are preciously few of them thankfully, somewhat bogged down the otherwise perfect pace of the movie.

Nonetheless, this is quite an intelligent film with a very real, gripping theme and terrific acting all round. Definitely worth at least a good evening's rental.