Withnail and I’s helmsman Bruce Robinson wrote and directed this neglected thriller bouyed by eerily employed wintry Pacific Northwest locations and a strong cast. Andy Garcia is John Berlin, a frayed, fragged LA detective who follows his former tutor Freddy Ross (Lance Henriksen, in sterling form) and his sister (Kathy Baker), now Ross’s wife, to work in a more peaceful neck of the woods, only to immediately stumble on severed body parts which Berlin
Robinson aims for an eccentric, sonorous, adult atmosphere to flesh out the standard framework, building his characters with care in some fine, intimate moments. Such scenes include that in which the socially awkward Helena Hollywood pseudo-giallo flicks, sustaining tension and ambience until close to the end. It also receives a shot in the arm from the late appearance by Malkovich, eating up the scenery like a lion on an antelope. Robinson had planned for this to pay for other projects, but its commercial failure meant his disappearance from the cinema scene, an exile that finally ended with his fairly good 2011 adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary.
