[3]

I don’t know what the hell I just saw. I could tell you what it’s about, but it’d be misleading. See, it’s about a discharged cop (Kevin Kline) who is roped back into the police to help them find a serial killer. Only very little screen time is actually devoted to that scenario. It’s mostly about this cop’s myriad relationships. There’s his old flame (Susan Sarandon), his new flame (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), his brother (Harvey Keitel), his boss (Danny Aiell0), his weird live-in painter (Alan Rickman), and there’s an occasional run-in with the mayor (Rod Steiger). One thing’s for sure: the cast is amazing! But aside from Steiger and Aiello getting to shout and say “fuck” a few times, none of them have much to do.

The tone of this movie just didn’t work for me. At one point, the serial killer is about murder Mary Elizabeth, but Kline can’t break the door down to get to her. Meanwhile, Marvin Hamlisch is scoring the scene like it’s a slapstick comedy and goofy-looking geriatric neighbors are opening their doors to see what’s going on. I knew the movie was a little off-kilter, but is this shit really funny? I mean, none of the preceding murder scenes were portrayed that way. Was this some sort of lame test audience re-shoot sort of thing? I mean, the screenwriter did write Moonstruck for shit’s sake. Anyway. So, The January Man. Yeah. Not funny (to me, anyway), not exciting, not suspenseful, not even interesting. And don’t even get me started on Hamlisch.

Best part: When Danny Aiello starts opening verbal whoop-ass on Rod Steiger, and then Rod Steiger opens verbal whoop-ass on Danny Aiello… and wins.