Nice try

Rating: 3/10 (14 July 2000)

(Some SPOILERS!) Here you get to see the most moronic individual ever to wear a detective's badge (well played by Brad Pitt, but it may come naturally to him) team up with the standard wise, fatherly old cop (Freeman) to trade cop talk lifted from some TV series for about an hour and a half. Interspersed with this insipid dialogue are (1) some gross scenes which are meant to be shocking; and (2) random scenes featuring Gwyneth Paltrow which have absolutely nothing to do with what passes for a plot up to that point, making it pretty clear that either (a) something's gonna happen to her in the end; (b) the script was written by a moron; or (c) both of the above. Nothing of any interest at all happens until Kevin Spacey finally shows up, but even he has trouble making anything out of this silly, predictable wanna-be thriller. While I'm at listing things, here are the top two most annoying things about this movie (apart from Brad Pitt's non-character): (1) almost every outdoor scene features pouring rain (how utterly noir!); (2) almost every indoor scene takes place in an apartment which for some inexplicable reason has no lights, or whose occupants use exclusively 5-watt lightbulbs (so noir, it hurts).