I know Ray Liotta, i've seen Ray Liotta...

Rating: Null/10 (6 August 2002)

and Johnny Depp you're no Ray Liotta. From the first moment he appears on screen his character is just plain boring. He never gives us any clue why we should be interested in him, he looks like a dork and has no charisma at all- miles away from what Liotta did in "Goodfellas."
Of course the script isn't doing him any favors. Why is this guy a cop? He seems to enjoy being a mobster a lot more. All the cops in the movie are stupid, out of touch losers and the mobsters are cool- just like in most mob movies- except most are told from the mob POV, not the FBI's. Normally it's a guilty pleasure to root for the bad guys and we can all identify to some extent with the desire to live outside the law and lets face it- mobsters are cool.
This movie could've shown the other side, that hey, these are bad people who deserve to be put away, and the cops who risk their lives to do it are heroic. But who knows why Depp's character is going after them? They could've at least given him a stock "mobsters killed his dad" motivation or something!
And then there's his wife- Ann Heche- she married an FBI agent not expecting he might be away from home or work odd hours? By the time he finally punches her in the face near the end you almost feel she deserves it.
All in all, this is a confused mess of a movie and just plain boring. There is a lot of Pacino mumbling incomprehensively interspersed with some standard gory violence.
The movie never really resolves itself at all. There is $300,000 in stolen money in his house- so where did it go? Who knows? He could've given it to pacino so he could buy his boat and disspear but for some reason he just forgets and lets mumbly Al get killed instead (we assume)And apparently his wife loves him again at the end, since she wanted a divorce and then he punched her, everything seems to be fine b/c he got a plaque from the FBI?

Oh yeah and the soundtrack is horrid. There was other music besides tacky disco in the late 70s! Another thing Goodfellas did right that this movie did wrong.