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What we have here is a classic noir arrangement -- characters are ground up in the machinery of fate. But there are several interesting embellishments.Overtly, it is a movie about movie-making; underneath this, there is a effortless feel to how it alludes to its genre components: monster flicks, sci-fi, slasher/horror, gangster shoot 'em ups. The opening 'movie within a movie' sequence references "The Godfather" and forms the template for the 'murder'. "Scarface" (both of them) is heavily quoted.The premise is largely the "Mission: Impossible" TV series -- everything revolves around actors playing characters who assume identities and then abandon them; identities defined by cosmetics.The parts that engage are the detective genre borrowings carried by Dennehy. He is our surrogate within the story. Both he and Brown defeat the noir machinery, mostly by prestidigitation and illusion. The main story and the detective story dovetail together quite neatly.What held this back is the mediocre visual narrative - it doesn't assume its life as a director's vision, but as a written work. Mandel isn't up to the task - this could have been special in the right hands.
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