sol1218 ****SPOILERS**** "Traces of Red" would have been a decent modern Film-Noir thriller if it only ended like it started but the makers of the movie had to add on some ten minutes to the story and that just about destroyed it. Trying to be cute and twist and fool the audience with an off-the-wall ending made it look both foolish and unconvincing and it even showed on the faces of the actors in the film;as they tried to keep a straight face and not crack up from laughing.The movie had all the ingredients for a good police whodunit: a good cast beautiful women and locations and even a part in the story that dates back some thirty years. This dark secret has something to do with the murders and is linked to the detective investigating the killings but that really ridicules ending sunk the film. Det. Jack Dobson, James Belushi,is investigating a number of murders of beautiful young and rich widows, aren't they all, in rich and socially prominent Palm Beach Florida. The killer purposely leaves clues that somehow tie all the killings to Det. Dobson. The killer sends him letters after each murder with a kiss mark on them that has the same kind of lipstick that the murdered women had smeared on their lips after they were killed. The letters are typed with an imperfection of the letters D & L and it's obvious that the killer wants the police or Det. Dobson to know this. As the Palm Beach Police Department try to find out who the killer is something comes up out of the blue about the detective on the case Det. Dobson which has him taken off the case. It turns out that this person Ross Worth knew one of the murdered women in Key West when she worked at a nightclub there. The woman Morgan Cassidy, Michelle Joyner, just happened to be Det. Dobson girlfriend!Now get this! Ross Worth's mother Gloria Worth was arrested and put away for some twenty years for molesting Det. Dobson when he was six years old when she was his first grade teacher;it was Dobson's testimony that put her away. Mrs. Worth died a week before the killing in Palm Beach started and the police there think that it's her son Ross who's doing them to get revenge for his mother. It's also found out that all the women killed were involved with Det. Dobson. Taken off the case because of his possible connection to the murders Det. Dobson is replaced by his partner Det. Frayn, Tony Goldwyn, who flies to Key West to check out Ross Worth only to find out that he died of AIDS the year before. Det. Frayn does find one of Det. Dobson's lady friends another beautiful rich and widowed Palm Beach socialite Ellen Schofield, Lorrain Bracco. Lorrain has a one-night-stand with Det. Frayn, who's married, and later blackmails him by calling his wife Beth, Faye Grant, and leaving a massage on the phone recorder. Det. Dobson get very upset with his partner Det. Frayn for having an affair with his girlfriend Ellen and Frayn's wife leaves him with her young daughter. When Det. Frayn goes to see Ellen at her home on the beach he finds her murdered.The film was really starting to pick up and really become interesting even up to the final minute but then the "Surprise Ending" came in and just deep sixth the entire movie. I don't know why the movie-makers had to put in that moronic ending. It may have been a way to make the star of the movie James Belushi not look so bad. You already saw at the very beginning of the film that he was killed and we were getting all this, the story, from him from the grave in flashback. But that "ending" was just too much and it took everything out of what was up until then a fairly good crime/suspense film.

bob the moo When homicide cop Jack Dobson starts getting threatening letters and has his car trashed, he and his partner assume that it is the work of a mobster who Jack is testifying against. However when the writer of the letters starts killing friends and lovers of his, Jack starts to investigate with the killer's lipstick and a defective typewriter as his only clues.Opening with a shot of his own dead body, we are taken through this film by the narration of Jack himself, seemingly in an attempt to make it more gritty and typical of the genre. The plot spins wildly out of control - but not due to an abundance of ideas so much as just poor writing and poor delivery of the finished product. The connections between the various dots is not very important as the vast majority of the strands exist solely to act as red herrings - although how you could ever hope to guess the ridiculous twists that come at the end of this film is beyond me - the makers needed have bothered trying to trick us!The plot never manages to thrill at any point, which could be considered a problem in a thriller. The lack of clarity in any of the threads (never mind their composite) means that you never really get involved enough to be gripping or indeed even care who the killer is or what their motivation might be. Having established that this erotic thriller has no thrills, then we are left with only the promise of the erotic! Of course, as you might imagine, this film doesn't deliver that either. Oh, it has nudity and some quick scenes of sexual material but it is just lazily stuck in there to widen the market appeal of this film - certainly if you came here looking for, ahem, whacking material, then you will be very disappointed.The cast is OK in regards names, but don't really do anything in regards helping the film be better. Belushi is as average as ever; I suppose he does try to bring intense emotions out of his character here, but generally he is doing his usual stuff. Goldwynn is OK but his main contribution here is another recognisable face. Bracco tries hard but she is no Sharon Stone! She doesn't suit her hairstyle, never mind her character. She tries but she comes off silly - and her body double does her no favours during the nude scenes - lying there as flaccid as a deflated balloon!Overall this film is just poor. In terms of thrills it is dull and so incoherent and badly structured as to render any excitement dead. If you're looking for erotic thrills then this film will disappoint you as well. The only moment of interest for me was the fact that the makers clearly took bets to see how absurd a twist they could get away with.

George Parker If so, you'll like "Traces of Red", a murder mystery in which Belushi plays a cop hot on the trail of a serial killer in Palm Beach, FL. Though the flick misses the sweaty Florida noir atmospherics of "Palmetto" and "Gold Coast" and dishes up a convoluted, not-to-be-taken-seriously plot, it does feature the same old likeable tough guy Belushi in his slimmer days. Good stuff for Belushi fans. Marginal, mediocre escapist stuff for everyone else. (C)

gridoon Overheated but good-looking and fairly entertaining murder mystery that will probably please most whodunit fans, despite (or, for some viewers, perhaps BECAUSE of) its overly convoluted plot, which may even demand a second viewing to get completely straightened out in one's head. James Belushi gets to show some ambiguity that's rare for him, but Lorraine Bracco's femme fatale is a barely sexy disappointment. (**)