CinemaSerf
Sep 3, 2022
6/10
Whilst this boasts a really strong cast, it isn't really anything much to write home about as thriller. Retired cop "Ross" (Paul Newman) lives with the wealthy, but terminally ill, actor "Ames" (Gene Hackman) and his wife "Catherine" (Susan Sarandon). When a young girl is kidnapped, he is asked to deliver the ransom money - but as ever, no good deed goes unpunished, and soon he is embroiled in a twenty year old cold case involving her former husband that becomes distinctly perilous! James Garner appears and somehow that just put me in mind of one of the episodes from the "Rockford Files" upon which this could easily have been based. The cast are on screen, but they - especially Hackman - don't really seem to care. Their efforts are flat - not helped by an unremarkable screenplay and a plot that offers us nothing at all new. Indeed, one has to wonder what Paul Newman saw in it when he accepted the part. It's fairly clear to the audience who is pulling the strings and thereafter it's all just a procedural effort made watchable only by the charisma that is on the screen in spades. It is aptly named for the two leading gents; I doubt this is a film they would have touched in their prime.
