Synopsis
Keen young Raymold Avila joins the Internal Affairs Department of the Los Angeles police. He and partner Amy Wallace are soon looking closely at the activities of cop Dennis Peck whose financial holdings start to suggest something shady. Indeed Peck is involved in any number of dubious or downright criminal activities. He is also devious, a womaniser, and a clever manipulator, and he starts to turn his attention on Avila.
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Cast
- Richard GereDennis Peck
- Andy GarcíaRaymond Avila
- Laurie MetcalfAmy Wallace
- Nancy TravisKathleen Avila
- Elijah WoodSean Stretch
- Richard BradfordGrieb
- William BaldwinVan Stretch
- Michael BeachDorian Fletcher
- Faye GrantPenny Stretch
- John KapelosSteven Arrocas
Recommendations
- 80
Empire
It has grown a little thin with age, especially Gere’s yuppie baiting speeches, but there’s a hardness here, an aversion to the dumb action thrills of the genre, that keeps it respectably high up the scale. - 80
Time Out
Figgis (in his first American feature) handles the explosive action and the psychological undercurrents with equal assurance. Dark, dangerous and disturbing. - 75
Washington Post
These are mean streets, but they're sexy and mean. And the evil here is all the more compelling because it has its enticements. So does the film, and though you'd be kidding yourself to accept it as anything other than flirtatious posturing, the allure of the thing is nearly irresistible. - 70
The New York Times
The very appealing Mr. Garcia has an intense, studied cool that is nicely offset by bilingual outbursts. And Mr. Gere makes the most of Peck's smiling villainy, giving him a powerful physical presence and a dangerous, unpredictable edge. - 70
Variety
Figgis never lets the pace slow long enough to expose the story’s thinness despite, in retrospect, a moderate amount of action. - 63
Washington Post
Self-respecting humans with strange kicks, such as family values or an aversion to nasty sex and violence, already know not to see this movie, but those with strange axes to grind (like, you hate Richard Gere, for instance), or too much time, or demented senses of humor, and you know who you are, may just have a fun time of this. - 60
Los Angeles Times
It never cuts loose. No matter how much come-hither villainy Gere generates, or how much envy and menace Garcia throws back at him, they're still trapped there in that bare, empty story, waiting for the dry ice and the steam to arrive. - 50
Rolling Stone
Just what we didn't need: another kick-ass cop flick in which we know the guys are macho because they rough up their wives and the gals are hot because they totter on spike heels like hookers.
