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Sydney Fuller: So, who are you gonna punch a confession out of next?
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Sydney Fuller: I just wanted to spend the night with you, not Eternity!
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Mrs. Fitzwaring: How did you know about Nick?
Dexter Cornell: I'm psychic.
Bernard: Good. Then you know what's going to happen to you.
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Bernard: I don't think I like what you're inferring, Mr. Cornell...
Dexter Cornell: [condescendingly] Implying. When I say it, that's implying. How you take it, that's inferring.
Bernard: I see. Infer this.
[punches Dexter]
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Sydney Fuller: This is life. Here, now. Take it or leave it.
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[last lines]
Dexter Cornell: Just somebody's homework, is all.
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Dexter Cornell: So, who are you going to kill for your next novel?
Hal Petersham: All I need is this one break; after that, I can write anything I want. And you can bet that I won't sit on my laurels like you did!
Dexter Cornell: Well, at least they *were* my laurels.
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Hal Petersham: You had it... You had it... and you pissed it away... goddamit Dex... you had a talent... You had a talent that other people...
Dexter Cornell: [pulls a gun on Hal] ... kill for?
[last lines]
Hal Petersham: Yeah that's right kill for... isn't that what it's all about? Publish or Perish?
Dexter Cornell: [as he fires his gun] Perish
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Dexter Cornell: Is that the best your petty, prosaic little mind can come up with?
Detective Ulmer: It's a petty, prosaic little world, Mr. Cornell.
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Dexter Cornell: So, who you gonna kill for your next novel?
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Dexter Cornell: [laughing] So this is what it's all about: some kid's damn homework!
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Description
Time. It's running out for Dexter Cornell (Dennis Quaid). He has just 24 hours to find out who poisoned him ... and why. In his bizarre and deadly search, everyone has a secret. Everyone is a suspect. Even the woman (Meg Ryan) who loves him. Directed by Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, creators of superstar "Max Headroom," D.O.A. pulsates with explosive action and sizzling performances by Quaid and Ryan, two people who find themselves suddenly living on the edge. It's a night on the run, filled with fear, danger ... and passion.
Amazon.com
Like Body Heat before it, D.O.A. demonstrates why the noir thriller deserved to be brought back--if done well. This movie, inspired by the 1949 Edmund O'Brien version, begins powerfully. A man stumbles into a police station to report a murder: his own. Writer Dexter Cornell (Dennis Quaid), an unhappy English professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has been poisoned. He has 24 hours to unveil his killer. It's a complex plot of forgotten dreams, dysfunctional relationships, and primarily bitterness. But it's so effectively directed (by Max Headroom's Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton) and so powerfully acted, it draws its audience into its puzzling and dark, hopeless world. Meg Ryan, who teamed the previous year with her now-husband Quaid in Innerspace, demonstrates her range well. The year before she played a put-upon career woman, but here she is completely credible as sweetly youthful student Sydney Fuller, who has a crush on her professor and becomes embroiled in his tragedy, while falling in love. Other excellent performances include Rob Knepper as aspiring writer-student Nicholas Lang; Charlotte Rampling as Lang's creepy, powerful mother; Jane Kaczmarek as Cornell's ex-wife, and Wonder Years voice Daniel Stern as an ambitious fellow teacher. --N.F. Mendoza
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