A murder mystery with a better than usual set-up and a no worse than usual letdown. The backdrop of Japanese encroachment on American shores is sketched in ways ranging from witty to sinister to sleazy. Witty: the Peckinpah spoof (a swarm of ants in a dusty road, a dog exiting an adobe church with a human hand in its mouth) that turns out to be a music video in a karaoke bar in downtown Los Angeles. Sinister: the boardroom bugging system by which the Nakamoto Corporation gains the upper hand in its bid to take over a micro-chip manufacturer with important ties to U.S. defense. Sleazy: the secret seraglio of white mistresses guarded by yakuza sentinels. "I don't get you, Eddie," says one of its residents, prettily posed at her vanity table, wearing nothing but her perplexity. Eddie, ever the inscrutable Oriental, responds: "So what?" The cultural documentation thins out as we go along, and the mystery plotting descends to the level of a weekly TV cop show, but the detectives on the case hold our interest: a liaison officer from the LAPD and his semi-legendary predecessor in the job, a Japanophile now living in semi-retirement in Little Tokyo. There is a question of loyalty about this second man, as about the Indian scout in a cavalry Western, but, also like the Indian scout, he understands the lay of the land: "We may come from a fragmented MTV culture, but they do not." This is an interesting character, a Sherlock Holmesian repository of arcana, larger than life, more than a little daunting, and played with maximum-wattage charisma by Sean Connery. If Wesley Snipes, as his junior partner, can't quite match him, that fits in nicely with the relationship of teacher to pupil, master to apprentice, Holmes to Watson. Snipes pounds the beat from Wary Street to Worry Avenue; Connery knows the way through the labyrinth. Based on a novel by Michael Crichton; directed by Philip Kaufman. (1993) — Duncan Shepherd
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