Guilty as Sin

I knew exactly what this movie was going to be just based on the cast and the title, and then WRITTEN BY LARRY COHEN comes on the screen and I put on my seatbelt. In actuality I had no idea where this was going to go almost right out of the gate after the story is established. Don Johnson is a fantastic megalomaniac, and he also does a good job portraying one in this movie. See what I did there? Sillier than any other Lumet film I've seen but I did mention Larry Cohen right? Pretty innocent fun.

Cute study on the "black widower", and Johnson fills the role nicely with a suave menace. A bit too stuck in dialogue heavy, court drama mode and some more physical scenes could have elevated it to a 90s camp thriller of note.

I liked this more than I expected to, though it was in spite of the empty block of wood Nash Bridges. I longed for someone with charisma in the role, like Alec Baldwin (considering he did Glengarry Glen Ross the year before). Cohen's script is tight and angry (he clearly hates attractive, arrogant men) and, although the ending itself is bizarrely abrupt, I appreciated Lumet's refusal to turn it into a dumb action movie in the third act, which these wordy thrillers often tend to do.

I have a lot of respect for both Lumet and Cohen, but this film just doesn't work right. The attraction between the leads makes no sense, considering what a psycho he is and how determined she's supposed to be. Greenhill is meant to be charming, but he's so full of inappropriate behavior that he's irritating from his introduction. Twists later in the film are predictable, even if you're not trying, and the climax is too abrupt to be satisfying.

47.000

Extremely mediocre by the numbers thriller written by someone who has no idea how actual professional adults behave. It's full with stupid irrational and illogical choices, only there to serve the plot. It looks like a TV movie. I guess Sydney Lumet needed a paycheck.