The January Man
Tags: suspenseful, neo noir, murder, romantic

Plot synopsis:
On New Year's Eve, Manhattan socialite Alison Hawkins returns home from the evening's festivities. As she feeds her fish before going to bed, she is strangled to death by an undetected intruder with a blue ribbon. It is the latest murder by a serial killer who has been terrorizing New York for 11 months.
New York Mayor Flynn is frustrated with the lack of progress in tracking down the killer, and tells NYPD commissioner Frank Starkey to "get [his] brother, and get him now," as they both know Nick is the only man brilliant enough to catch this killer. This is a controversial assignment for Frank, as two years ago, Nick was disgraced in a scandal, and expelled from the force. Frank goes to the scene of a raging fire to find Nick, who has become a firefighter. Frank talks Nick into returning, but only on the condition that he be able to cook dinner the next night for Frank's wife, Christine, who is Nick's ex-girlfriend. After a press conference announcing Nick's reinstatement, Christine and Nick have dinner. Old wounds are opened, including mention of a canceled check that had been evidence that Frank was involved in the scandal that got Nick fired.
Police Captain Alcoa is not happy with Nick's return, having despised his attitude but respected his abilities as a detective, but has to go along with the mayor's demand that he give Nick anything he needs to solve the case. After reporting for work, Nick takes a different office than the one he was assigned because the light was not to the liking of his painter friend, Ed. After getting Alcoa to add Ed to the payroll as his assistant, Nick begins work on the case. His first lead is to speak to the mayor's daughter, Bernadette, who was a friend of Alison Hawkins. After Nick and Bernadette visit Alison's apartment, Nick decides to let Bernadette stay at his apartment, because she is too frightened to return to her own.
Nick realizes that all of the 11 previous murders occurred on dates that are prime numbers, all of which are among the 12 prime numbers possible up to the number 31. Because 5 is the only one of the 12 prime numbers that has not been used, he knows that the next murder will take place the next night, the fifth of the month.
Nick appears to have been proven wrong when a woman is strangled one day ahead of Nick's prediction, after which the killer leaps out the window to his death. Nick believes that this is a copycat killing, especially when he learns that the man broke a window, as opposed to picking a lock to gain entrance as in the other murders. To Frank and Flynn, however, it is a closed case, and they are content to be done with Nick.
Nick and Ed figure out that the position of the victims' buildings, when seen on a map of Manhattan, forms the constellation Virgo. They also realize that all the rooms in which the murders took place have windows on the front of the building, and that when the exterior positions of the windows are lined up together according to which floor they are on, they correlate to 11 notes in the chorus of the song "Calendar Girl". This enables them to identify where "The January Man" will next strike.
Nick sets a trap with Bernadette as bait, outfitting her with a neck guard to prevent the killer from strangling her. The trio stake out the room in a supply closet and witness the killer picking the lock to get into the apartment. They intercept the apartment's resident and send Bernadette in, where she is attacked. Nick breaks in and, after a prolonged struggle with the killer, subdues him. He then wraps him up in the hall carpet and delivers him to the police outside the building.

Review: January man is kind of a neat movie that is clearly a romantic comedy masquerading as a psychological thriller.
The serial killer (the January man) is almost ancillary to the actual plot of the movie.
But that could be said about some hugely successful blockbuster films as well.Underneath this is a good little crime thriller with some likable characters who are trying to work out the clues to catch a killer with a taste for strangling women in their city apartments.Kevin Kline is enjoyable, Susan Sarandon and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio are classy, Harvey Keitel doesn't really do much and Alan Rickman kind of floats around to help loosen up the mood of the film.
Some of the dialog sounds like it was lifted from an adapted play or is better for an older, more mature generation.But, the stand out star of this film is Danny Aiello, who plays Captain Vincent Alcoa.
He has a filthy mouth, loves yelling and putting people down all the time and has to deal with a Kline as a difficult police detective who returns to the job.The film alone is worth seeing for his performance..
But if you're looking for a nice little movie with stellar cast, very good acting and silly story that'll amuse you for some 90 minutes, then try The January man.
It is silly - an absurd mix of thriller, comedy, romance, drama, good cop - bad cop, the story is full of flaws, but the movie itself is really well done.
Ostensibly about a serial killer, it is more of a quirky character study, except it is actually a multi-character study, with these characters being brought to life by the likes of Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon, Harvey Keitel, and Rod Steiger, just to name a few (a very few).
An absurd mix of thriller, comedy, romance, and other things; the manic behaviour, strange dialogues, and weird/inconsistent mood-changes make this a very silly movie but also an enjoyable one.
Kline is entertaining as the detective-turned-fireman-turned-detective, Steiger - sporting silly blond hair - overacts like a lunatic in the role of the city's emotional mayor, Aiello plays the classic ever-angry cliché police boss, Keitel stands around looking rather bored, Mastrantonio shows that she's got terrific breasts, the model for the painting shows she's got even better breasts, and it's always good to have Susan Sarandon in a movie - though quite ironically of all actresses she doesn't show her terrific chest!
How do you go wrong with Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (I haven't liked her in anything else, but she was actually good here), Harvey Keitel, Rod Steiger, and Danny Aiello ?
Kline plays a former cop, now fireman, and brother of the New York City police commissioner (Keitel  do these two look like brothers at all  NO!), who is called back on the force to stop a serial killer.
Yeah, the film doesn't really chooses to be either comedy or thriller or just a who dun it but it's great fun to watch.Kevin Kline (who I never really cared for not even in A Fish Called Wanda) is playing one of his better roles as the reinstated cop although I do admit the whole sideline of the two cop brothers doesn't really add anything and could have been dropped all together which means dumping Susan Sarandon, so what.But give it a try keep an open mind and it is nice flick.
Even if you don't like mystery films tape the fight scene at the end of this, it is one of the funniest you will ever see.Just one more thing would somebody get Nick Starkey a cappuccino..
Alan Rickman was cute and extraneous, Susan Sarandon was there and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio has large and attractive boobs for a small woman - she didn't have much of anything else to do in this film.Plot - stupid, ridiculous, complex and extraneous..
If you're looking for a good suspense movie, a few laughs or if you're just a Kevin Kline fan who wants to catch up on his back catalog give January Man a play.
This has to be one of the funniest movies not billed as a comedy.Kevin Kline and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio are just superb and absolutely shine and Alan Rickman almost steals the movie.
it's the only mainstream serial killer comedy.In 'January Man', A-list actors took a stab at subject matter that had always been in the realm of B-movies, and suffered an undeserved critical drubbing as a result.'January Man' is a black comedy in which the murder mystery takes a backseat to a character study of the detective who solves it.
The story is an Us and Them comedy, with Kline, Rickman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as the extremely likable Us, and Susan Sarandon, Harvey Keitel, Rod Steiger, and Danny Aiello acting up a storm to be unlikeable as Them.'The January Man' is a non-conformist favorite I have to slap into the player at least once a year.
Police commissioner Frank Starkey (Harvey Keitel) is under heavy pressure and Mayor Flynn (Rod Steiger) forces him to get his brother Nick Starkey (Kevin Kline).
When someone loaned me this on DVD, I couldn't believe I'd never heard of it - Kline, Sarandon, Keitel, Mastrantonio, Steiger, Rickman, Aiello - what a cast!
And the actors all look like they know this is going to be a huge waste of time - Rod Steiger, in particular, gives what has to have been the worst performance of his career.
My friends and I are holding an Alan Rickman Summer Film Extravaganza, and we've thus far watched seventeen of his movies.
Within each actor struggling on-screen to make yet another terrible line work, a emotion best characterized by the phrase, "Oh, what the hell..."  I do not doubt that Kline, Steiger, Rickman, and Keitel--talented as they might be--knew they got cast in a good idea gone bad.
The result is a very bad movie starring good actors acting badly, reveling in their own badness: an accomplishment in postmodernism if anything ever was.So how does one rate such a situation (probably best not use the word "film" here)?
The acting isn't bad, it's just mediocre, which ends up making for a stunningly boring movie.I remember when this movie came out and watching Kevin Kline plugging it on Letterman.
Why on earth good actors like Kline, Sarandon and Co. agreed to appear in this rubbish is a mystery (Maybe the money??).
Except maybe for Alan Rickman, the cast gives really awful performances (especially Rod Steiger), not helped by a number of instances of some really terrible dialogue.
It's so odd in its changing tone, next to incoherent at times with its story, and packed with really bad performances by a normally talented cast, that you can't help but keep watching in order to see what next miscalculation will be displayed on the screen.
Alan Rickman was wasted, as well as the one-leveled voices of Danny Aiello and Rod Steiger whose only direction from Pat O'Conner was to yell.
From the poor acting, the cryptic story that needed some form of decoder ring to understand, the passionless actors, to the harshly branded word "comedy", January Man proves that not all films should be made and that an advanced screen process should be used regularly.
A film with Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon, Alan Rickman, Harvey Keitel and Rod Steiger should have been good, but this film was so bad I had to close my eyes.What is suppose to be funny about someone who kills women.
a good script.Hay don't get me wrong, I like a good black comedy, as long it has comedy in it.I think the cast where working hard, and Kevin Kline, one of the best actors in the USA, was trying to do his best with the crap he was given.This film was written by John Patrick Shanley, who also wrote the very bad 'Joe Versus the Volcano' and won an Oscar for 'Moonstruck' (They must have had some left over that year), can the academy ask for the Oscar back?
Kevin Kline plays Nick Starkey, an ex-cop who gets drug back into the force to help find a serial killer.
This one toes the line between thriller and love story; I guess that neither is supposed to dominate.I would say that the movie's main strength lies in the various kinds of characters portrayed.
Aside from Kline's ex-cop and Sarandon as his wife, there's the new love interest (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), Nick's brother (Harvey Keitel), the tough captain (Danny Aiello), and the old-order mayor (Rod Steiger); Alan Rickman also stars.So, did I think that this was a good movie?
And that perspective is always welcome, especially here because it took the gambit of really not focusing on the killer at all.It was a bit like Manhunter in its approach.And the fact that an actor with great comedic timing was cast as the lead and supported by Alan Rickman in a nearly unrecognizable role made it even better.
Mayor Eamon Flynn (Rod Steiger), orders police commissioner Frank Starkey (Harvey Keitel) to get his brother Nick (Kevin Kline) back on the police force to solve the crime.
The characters unravel intriguingly but very fluidly, and it is easy to relate to almost all of them (I bet we can all think of parallels in our own lives.) Theme-wise it is ostensibly presented as a suspense movie where an ex-cop (Kevin Kline) is re-instated into a homicide detective role to solve a brutal murder spree by a NY psychopath.
But Kline is clearly the pivot of the movie, he turned what many might consider a very below standard screenplay and turned it into a very keepable film.The first hour though really doesn't know what it wants to be.
The comedy and thriller aspect of the film meld into one and work, and it turns into a half decent movie.Overall rating: 6 out of 10..
"The January Man" is a fairly offbeat, if thoughtful crime thriller set in Manhattan, where its main focus is on the characters leaving the serial killer elements to be secondary.
Personal dramas and friction lead the way, which are actually a lot more interesting than the slowly pitched out investigative angle of John Patrick Shanley's jarringly unsure screenplay where Kline's disgraced ex-cop character is hesitantly asked (by his police commissioner brother played with stern mentality by Harvey Kietel) to rejoin the police fore to help track down a serial killer that for every month has been killing a women for 11 months.
The concept had some promise even if the nature of it can be routine, but whenever it tackles Kline's character looking into the pattern of this serial killer, trying his best to work him out and beat the clock before the next murder.
Kline and Mastrantonio are reasonable but never electric as the central couple in what I saw billed as a "romantic serial killer thriller comedy" - and perhaps this is the film's major problem - it doesn't really know what it's trying to be.
The scattering of wacky characters - Kline leading as the "hilariously" oddball sleuth with a penchant for odd food and weirder decor, with his slow-talking computer-whizz artist buddy (?) Rickman in tow - sets up a comedy agenda reminiscent of real crime comedies such as "Foul Play" (except without the laughs), and some scenes fit this genre, the climactic fight scene in particular.
However, the other characters seem to think they are in an entirely different film, Steiger, Keitel and Aiello all playing straight as if they were in a Copland-style hard-talking psychological actioner and Sarandon flailing about in her bit-of-nothing part not really knowing what she's there for.
Harvey Keitel and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio put in passable performances but really the whole cast simply deserves a better movie.The big problem is that the film tries to pack in too many ideas, the murder, government corruption, family relationships, and a bit of comedy and consequently skims the lot and doesn't do one of them really well.A passable movie but there are many better detective, action movies around to choose instead..
Cast: Kevin Kline: Nick Starkey Susan Sarando: Christine Starkey Mary Elizabeth Mastranton: Bernadette Flynn Harvey Keitel: Frank Starkey Danny Aiello: Capt.
OK, its nice to see Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon, Danny Aiello and Alan Rickman together.
How can you make a bad movie when you have Rod Steiger, Kevin Kline, Harvey Keitel, Susan Sarandon, Danny Aiello and Allen Rickman in the cast?
How can you have Kline and Keitel, Steiger and Sarandon, Aiello, Rickman, Mastrantonio, and yet produce such a stinker?
I think maybe they had a hard time ending this one .I always try to rate movies more so on the actors performances because their the ones that bear the brunt of a bad movie if they can get me to watch a movie and enjoy it like this movie even though I have some problems with it it says more about how good they are and not how bad the script is and this script isn't bad it's just hard to believe sometimes especially the ending .I always find kevin kline fun to watch harvey delivered too they all did and loved seeing the actor from the exorcist again I apologize for my spelling I'm to tired to correct the errors..
There is, also, (in my opinion), an under text of bi-sexuality, for both Kevin Kline/Alan Rickman, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio/girlfriend victim.
Susan Sarandon, unfortunately, is given little to use as Kline's one-time lover and current wife of his brother, Keitel.
a Mysterious Serial Killer performs some Brutal Killings leaving Incredibly Complex Clues and Only One Cop Can Catch Him (a long-haired sneaker-wearing Rogue Cop), and that's the Kevin Kline character, temporarily a fireman, who enters the film bursting through a fence in the process of, what else, Saving a Child.
It has a peculiar charm that comes from seeing good actors (Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon, Harvey Keitel, Alan Rickman) struggling with an screenplay from hell..
Alan Rickman's throwaway artist/computer geek character is apparently included only to supply an excuse for having a nude model, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is the 23-year-old mayor's daughter who still lives with her father and seems not to have a job because she's always at Kline's apartment.As for the title, January Man, it doesn't make sense.
This might have been a fun film when it came out in 1989 but in light of all that has happened since then and how much we now know about serial killers it is embarrassing to watch today.
With Kline,Sarandon,Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio,Harvey Keitel, Danny Aiello,Rod Steiger,Alan Rickman.Problem is that everybody gets minimum of 5 minutes for showing himself, on account he or she is a movie star.
If you want to have a nice time, than don't ever try to watch this movie!
We were drawn to the fabulous cast, Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon, Rod Steiger, Harvey Keitel, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Alan Rickman & Danny Aiello.
A web that includes Frank's wife, bribery, and corruption all are in the background as Nick tries to uncover the secret of where the killer will strike next, and finally must lay a trap without the police....I'm still unsure of this movie, I've given it a seven because the last 30 minutes of the film really come into their own, and make up for the bizarreness of the preceding hour.The first hour though really doesn't know what it wants to be.
A murder, family drama, random eroticism, serial killer movie, comedy, thriller.
A murder, family drama, random eroticism, serial killer movie, comedy, thriller.
Keitel just seem bemused by the whole thing and spends the majority of it staring at Sarandon, who I turn spends the majority of the film staring at Kline and stalking him.The rest of the cast are thankfully brilliant.
Kline is as good as always, and is ably supported by Mastrantonnio, and another brilliant turn by Rickman.The film comes into its own when the Red Herring gets thrown in.
The comedy and thriller aspect of the film meld into one and work, and it turns into a half decent movie.Bizarre to say the very least, but interesting..
The film does have quite a few great moments of dialog (especially when Kline's or Rickman's character is involved), but the plot itself is contrived to the point of unbelievability.
Two years ago, a scandal forced Nick Starkey (Kevin Kline) off the NYPD, but now the mayor wants him back to find a serial killer.This is a terrible movie with a ridiculous script.
What a colossal waste of talent.There is no suspense or romantic tension and certainly no hint of real police work, just a lot of good actors looking foolish in a bad movie.
The only thing that kept me watching was the amazing star power of the cast - Kline, Sarandon, Keitel, Rickman, Steiger, Aiello, Mastrantonio, all of whom gamely try to pretend they are in a much better film.
Usually it's thumbs down at this point but this looked like it was going to be one of those movies that is so bad you have to watch it just to see how many clichés they'll wrack up.
Kevin Kline is a great actor full of charisma, and Steiger and Aiello are full fledge in support.
I'm not sure this contains a spoiler, but I certainly to de-construct some of the plot that I considered bad, so please don't read if you intent to see the film.loved watching Kevin Kline and Alan Rickman (excellent!) -- but the movie could have been so much more if they had spent a little time on the story.
I think honestly it is because of the character Alan Rickman crafted--and his relationship to Kline.