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This 1995 curiosity by Raymond DeFelitta suffers from miscasting and some grating ideas about shooting and editing sex scenes for the ultimate visual dissonance. But it is also an insightful period piece that is set in the 1950s and is concerned with official efforts to secure trophy arrests and trump up charges for maximum career gain. A web is spun once an undercover cop (Peter Gallagher) steps into a Manhattan nightclub and sets his sights on a gossipmonger and part-time pimp (John Spencer), as well as the latter's ne'er-do-well playboy nephew (Frank Whalley). The stew thickens as a former call girl (Lara Flynn Boyle) with a reinvented identity enters the picture. Eventually, all the falsity causes this lot to tumble into a heap of depravity. DeFelitta tries too hard to make something artful of the anything-goes ambience of mindless (often criminal) pleasures. Whalley is the weakest link, his gifts as an actor lean more toward a young Jack Lemmon than a seductive bad boy. But as a window onto an American era and a self-aggrandizing government, there is much to view here. --Tom Keogh
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