Sidney Lumet in his accustomed role as message carrier and conscience nag. He is always at his least subtle when, as here, he trusts himself to author his own screenplay (Prince of the City, Q&A), to say nothing of the supplementary, seven-paragraph Director's Statement in the press notes: "Why am I back at the same old stand: cops, corruption, culpability? Because the problem won't go away. In fact, it's getting worse...." Nor is he helped by his choice of literary property, a Robert Daley legal potboiler -- with the less apocalyptic title of Tainted Evidence -- about a wet-behind-the-ears public prosecutor (Andy Garcia) whose rise to the station of District Attorney is so rocketlike as to leave him with his ideals intact, utterly unprepared for the percolating case of police misconduct. (Advice from the outgoing D. A., the scenery-chewing Ron Leibman: "You want clean hands, become a priest.") The details of his ascent -- he is assigned to a high-profile murder trial only because his own father, a career Irish cop, was wounded in a shootout with the defendant; he gets his conviction by goading the man into assaulting him from the witness box; and he is selected, despite his youthful inexperience and despite his romance with a radical anti-Establishment defense lawyer, to step in for the incumbent D.A. when the latter suffers a stroke in mid-campaign -- are not apt to leave the viewer as starry-eyed. Complete incredibility is a poor platform for a would-be tough, cynical, no-holds-barred, no-punches-pulled exposé. Ian Holm, James Gandolfini, Lena Olin, Richard Dreyfuss. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd