The first half is great, with all the cross-cutting and Kirk Douglas bad-assing his way through a carjacking (of young Dennis Franz!) and Amy Irving melting down at school (at the same table as young Laura Innes!), but then it gets really slow, and Amy Irving’s acting choices…well, using the plural there is a mistake, actually, since she’s mostly shrugging her shoulders up really high and making a constipated face, but it’s not like the role leaves her much choice. It’s just disappointing, because at the beginning, she’s good; I’ve always wondered why she didn’t get much more famous than she did. She’s so pretty, too. Anyway…oh, yeah, so the central premise of the movie is sort of dumb, but De Palma does a good job of telegraphing it without getting too melodramatic; it’s just that the second half is a problem, because 1. we do know the premise by that time, and he spends too much time on difficult shot-making and doesn’t move things forward, and 2. the guy who plays Robin is dreadful, and annoying, and it’s like, why does Kirk Douglas want to find this prat, again? And who is this poor man’s Kelly LeBrock he’s sleeping with? It’s standard De Palma — fun to watch, but problematic pacing-wise and a little too fond of the slo-mo. (6/13/04)

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