Manhattan Officer Jimmie Halloran (Courtney B. Vance) aids naive Ohio tourists Sarah Tubbs (Kathryn Erbe) and Merri Coffman (Robin Tunney), who've been ripped off by a limo driver. Off-duty, Halloran runs into teenhood pal Chaz Villaneuva (Giancarlo Esposito), who's now a hit man targeting Halloran. At a rave club, gullible Merri and Sarah meet Marco (Sebastian Roche), a dealer and white slaver. At his den of iniquity, Merri shoots Marco before he can rape Sarah; incredibly, she rips off $120,000 Marco owes to drug-dealer Donovan (Tyrone Benskin). When Donovan's gang catch up to Merri and Sarah, the ladies manage to grab their assailants' assault weapons and annihilate them. Having obtained info from a mob connection, Halloran's partner Sgt. Muldoon (Scott Glenn) rushes to the auto pound to rescue Halloran who's been lured there by Chaz. Inspired by Jules Dassin's gritty 1948 noir classic, this police procedural is about as exciting as Mayor Giuliani's campaign to crack down on jaywalkers. Maybe the NYPD should've hired Merri and Sarah as undercover buttinskis; they're clearly better at disposing of felons than New York's finest. Traversing both the mundane and the ludicrous, this potboiler is an aggravated assault. --Robert Pardi
