Traces of Red Movie Review

Jim Belushi is a good actor, but I've never really thought of him as Mr. Sex. Nevertheless, he has two sex scenes in the first 18 minutes of Traces of Red, a so-called thriller with a great beginning, a great ending, and an absolute mess of a middle. The movie looks like it was shot one way and then re-edited and re-mixed in a patch job. (For starters, most of the film is a flashback, but the flashback doesn't go back far enough, so we hear about characters dealing with stuff that we NEVER get to see. That's cheating!) This is one of those movies where we can tell instantly what all the relationships are from the way that everyone glances at each other, and we're talking about from scene one. Moreover, from scene two it's easy to spot who's going to get it next and when, another sure sign of an inexperienced director, which Andy Wolk definitely is; this is his first movie. The worst thing that Wolk achieves is something that I didn't think was possible: a mediocre performance from Lorraine Bracco as a high society tramp. Since Wolk had Bracco's great husky voice and strong personality to work with, why would he, or anyone, want to encourage her to adopt Melanie Griffith's voice and mannerisms? There's a poorly developed subplot involving Belushi's police partner; in fact, there are long stretches when we don't know which partner is the actual focus of the movie. Since the partner is played by Tony Goldwyn, grandson of Samuel Goldwyn, and Traces of Red IS a Goldwyn release, it might make career-track sense, but it sure makes the plot hard to follow. Some viewers may just want to give up on this one and laugh at the mind-boggling ineptness of it all; it's a textbook!

1992 (R) 105m/C James Belushi, Lorraine Bracco, Tony Goldwyn, William Russ, Michelle Joyner, Joe Lisi, Jim Piddock; D: Andy Wolk; W: Jim Piddock; C: Tim Suhrstedt; M: Graeme Revell. VHS, LV, Closed Caption