This offbeat police thriller with heavy doses of humor was written by John Patrick Shanley, the former playwright who wrote Cher's hit romantic comedy Moonstruck. Kevin Kline stars as Nick Starkey, a brilliant former New York City police detective who has been exiled to the fire department because of his unorthodox ways. He's called back to service by his police commissioner brother Frank (Harvey Keitel) in the hopes that he can find a bizarre serial killer who's been murdering one woman a month. Nick's condition to agreeing to help is that he gets to cook dinner for Frank and his snooty wife Christine (Susan Sarandon), a former girlfriend of his. Ultimately, Nick uses his Zen-like intuition and some high-tech computer hardware (with prominent product placement plugs) to find the killer, pausing to have an affair with the mayor's beautiful daughter Bernadette (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.) In the improbable conclusion, Nick figures out the exact day the killer will strike and the exact apartment! January Man is too tongue-in-cheek to be taken seriously as a thriller. In addition to Keitel and Sarandon the stellar supporting cast includes Rod Steiger as the mayor and Danny Aiello as a tough police captain who rails against Nick's "beatnik" ways.

Excerpt from MRQE located HERE

In New York, eleven murders have taken place in as many months, and the serial killer is about to strike again. So bellicose mayor Steiger reluctantly reinstates maverick sleuth Nick Starkey (Kline), and despite the reservations of the police commissioner (Keitel), who also happens to be Nick's estranged brother, Nick is put on the case. In idiosyncratic fashion, Nick miraculously identifies the apartment that is the killer's next port of call...at which point plot and dramatic tension plummet. Black humour becomes knockabout comedy. Sarandon, as Keitel's wife and sometime lover of his brother, and Mastrantonio as the mayor's daughter who falls for Nick, give good enigmatic performances, but are mislaid in the ensuing tumult. John Patrick Shanley's screenplay, touching on themes of betrayal and corruption, honesty and trust, promises and teases but suffers from coitus interruptus.

Gary Tooze

August 3rd, 2015