This tired film noir for the direct-to-video market, toplined by a pair of network TV stars, is indistinguishable from similar tube fare except for body-doubled sex scenes between leads Stepfanie Kramer ("Hunter") and Jack Scalia.
She's sexy, aggressive photojournalist Karen Reikart; he's hunky Vietnam vet supercop Vince Morgan. Romantic sparks fly after she's knocked out by a mystery assailant while surreptitiously snapping shots of a drug raid, staged as an absurdly huge gunfight employing only slightly less firepower
than D-Day. Morgan takes her back to the station house, and eventually to bed; meanwhile, clue after clue hints that something's fishy about him. As the viewer learns, Morgan is employed by crooks and following orders to keep Karen under close watch at all times. An underworld assassin, he's--of
course--the same guy who knocked her out, and whatever trifling suspense remains involves whether he'll kill the lady or, predictably, turn against his bosses and die nobly defending her. It doesn't take an Internal Affairs investigation to answer that one.
Both leads grapple with poorly-written roles. Scalia's burdened by hoary routines like talking in his sleep and playing Russian roulette to symbolize Inner Torment. Kramer looks like she practiced hard at wielding a camera, but for all the character's rumored tenacity we barely ever see Karen
Reikart actually on the job. More often she's en route to or from a tryst with her sinister stud. Viewer sympathy is hardly enhanced by the fact that Karen comes accessorized with a daughter and estranged husband begging her to come back. Despite suggestions that events in her past have driven her
to take the same sort of walk on the wild side that Vince has, psychological underpinnings here get a lower priority than gunfights and drawn-out shots of unclad stand-ins thrashing between the sheets. In contrast to the seedy milieu, there's no swearing whatsoever (not counting the audience).
(Violence, sex, nudity, adult situations.) leave a comment
