Robert J. Maxwell You can't help but like movies about serial killers of little girls. They're so evil. There is no ambiguity whatever, no room for self doubt, no reason for reflection. They're the Osama bin Ladens of the criminal world. Even imprisoned murderers feel superior to child molesters and killers. Well, after all, THEY have to have somebody to look down on too.This Canadian production gives us Dennis Hopper and Frederick Forest as two detectives who are left only 48 hours to find the serial murderer. If they don't get the job done, the mayor's major investment in some property will be ruined and she'll be out of office. The mayor, however, is involved with some highly juiced Irish crooks, including Tom McCamus, and she puts the crooks on the tail of the serial murderer too because the killings are upsetting her apple cart. Tom McCamus has a great face for the movies. (He was an incestuous Dad in "The Sweet Hereafter".) And you can't beat him name, "Son of Camus." Unfortunately his acting here is about at the level of everyone else's -- strictly utilitarian. Dennis Hopper tries to play it straight, really he does. But underneath the professional cop and the flawed father we still sense the demon. I've always liked Frederick Forest. I don't think he's ever made it possible for a viewer to forget he's acting, but he looks great with his puffy eyes and louche ponytail. He looked even better as Dashiel Hammett. Not to put any of these performers down. Their acting doesn't stand out as poor because no one's stands out as particularly good. Leslie Hope seems to bring a kind of blur to whatever part of the screen she occupies. (Leslie Hope? Isn't that Bob Hope's real name? Maybe not.) The script is generic and not especially bad. The direction is efficient. The photography is really quite good. The colors are cool but appropriately so. And the lighting is as it should be -- solid black shadows where they are called for, and naturalistic lighting elsewhere. They didn't catch The X-File syndrome and throw us a lot of flashlight beams poking about in perpetual gloom. There's what I guess could be called an average chase through some newly constructed sewer at the climax.In first explaining how the sewer works to the investigators, the manager goes through his practiced tour -- the street runoff comes in here and is congealed with the solid waste, then it's processed in that unit over there, then the solid waste is emulsified and extracted by the Nakatomi Solid Waste Extractor, the individual E. coli are vasectomized, the cholera vibrios receive twelve-step counseling, the chloroform and bacteriocidal material are added over there, diluted with Toxico Smegmaphage, fractionally distilled, tested on experimental groups drawn from third-world prisons, and then its flushed out into the reservoir. "And that's what we drink?" asks a greenish Frederick Forest.It reminds me a little of Fritz Lang's "M" without any of the pathos.

kjpsychology Dennis Hopper is without a doubt one of the finest underrated American actors of our time, and it was interesting to see how he would play out his role as a cop on the case of a child serial killer. Most movies Hopper has always played to psychotic menace threatening to blow up stuff or go on a killing spree, but in this movie, Hopper tried his best to keep that intensity and emotion while carrying a shield. Once I got into the plot of the movie, I was hooked, but it's just the little things that ultimately murdered the film.The concept of the film is great - not only are the cops on the move of catching the killer, but we get a chance to see how the gangsters operate in catching the killer. The subplot of the football stadium is kinda ridiculous, but necessary to involve the gangsters in the killer hunt.That's about all that is good you can say about the film. Although Hopper did try to act like a tough, experienced street smart cop, I can't help but feel his acting was below par, and there wasn't enough conviction that he was truly attached to the case. The directing was also terrible - it didn't have the feel of a true film, but rather a TV-movie production. This is most evident when the gangsters meet for the first time to form an elite team to hunt the killer down. When the leading gangster shoots the other mouthy gangster in slow motion, the acting was weak, predictable and terribly unexciting. That's when I knew that 1st of all, the action is going to be atrocious.The angling of the camera was amateurish, and the recalling scenes or haunting images of the killer's little sister had no true distinctive effect. If it was supposed to be scary, it wasn't. Everyone's acting was terrible, and even for Hopper, I didn't feel for his character, and I just didn't really care too much about his relationship with his daughter.The final thing that bothered me the most is the swat team. Once I saw the swat team in action, I was thinking, finally, something good. But I was wrong. 1st of all, the entire swat team consisted of 4 guys. That is just impossible. 2nd of all, apparently the swat team has no training whatsoever because many times in the film they carry their HKA4 submachine guns with one hand. Had the killer been hiding near the staircase with a shotgun, these 4 idiots would've been blown to bits because they weren't even aiming at anything or paying close attention. They should have had both hands on the gun aiming forward, but it just looks like they're not taking the job seriously and are just flaunting around. 3rd, SWAT team members do not yell out commands such as "Keep your eyes open, watch out for yourselves, are we good to go...etc." In reality, they use hand signals or have radios. But they're literally yelling at each other - how are you supposed to catch the killer when he can hear you're coming??? And to top it all off, these guys have no plan - apparently they're just running up and down going on a wild turkey chase. Eventually they end up doing nothing. That was the last straw. I'm no expert on special forces, but basically what I've just outlined, is pretty common sense. When the audience knows the movie is terrible, the action pretty much becomes the life-saver of the movie - when you can't even make an effort to make the action great, the movie is lost.I give 2 stars for the concept, but the rest cannot be credited. If you want to watch a crime thriller, don't bother with this one. There's plenty of crime in the movie - but it has the lack of thrill.

yashualie the lowest score possible is one star? that's a shame. really, i'm going to lobby IMDb for a "zero stars" option. to give this film even a single star is giving WAY too much. am i the only one who noticed the microphones dangling over hopper's head at the station? and the acting, or should i say the lack thereof? apparently talent wasn't a factor when the casting director came to town. my little sister's elementary school talent show provides greater range and depth of emotion. and those fake irish accents were like nails on a chalk board. the only thing that could have made this movie worse would have been...oh, wait, no,no, it's already as bad as it can get.

sbarsky Maybe I've seen one too many crime flick, or maybe I don't take the right drugs.This was the most cliché ridden, plot deficient, plot-absurd, just plain stupid movie I have seen in a long time.As for the direction, it looks like it took less time to show this than it did to put it together.In fact it looks like to made it straight to video before it was completed.It's a bad rip off of "M" the classic Fritz Lang film starring Peter Lorre. You'd be SO much better off renting that instead.