Murder at 1600

with Wesley Snipes, Diane Lane, Alan Alda
Directed by Dwight Little
Written by Wayne Beach and David Hodgin
by Chaz Thorndike

From the name, I keep getting this movie mixed up with Turbulence. It could be worse; it could have an ignorably Hollydeadwood title like Absolute Power, Primal Fear, or started with the word The. But anyway… Murder at 1600 is a cop movie. And it stars Wesley Snipes. Plus it’s got Cherry from The Outsiders, Diane Lane, who’s looking rather delicious, I must say. (Who else could play the sister of cutey-pie Ellen Barkin in Trigger Happy without looking like the mutt of the litter?) But it’s still a cop movie. You know the clichés, if you’ve seen Beverly Hills Cop, Metro, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, or just about any action/adventure cop movie, you’ve seen most of this. Adapt the dialogue, change a few details of the chases, throw in clues it don’t take Sherlock Holmes to figger out, then work the dynamic between your sexy lead characters. Making action flicks is not brain surgery. (Then again, brain surgery could probably be reduced to an incredibly tedious, detailed set of procedures a trained monkey could follow, but I’d hate to lose that cliché as much as surgeons would resent being called glorified car mechanics.)

Bonuses of Murder at 1600 include Alan Alda playing a worm, Daniel Benzali playing a hard-ass Mr. Clean (now there’s a stretch), and Dennis Miller being almost completely useless to the plot, but funny nonetheless. (Sure, he sucked as the upstairs neighbor in Never Talk to Strangers with fire and ice Rebecca De Mornay and Antonio Banderas, but he was right fuckin’ on in Tales from the Crypt’s Bordello of Blood.) Truthfully, no one really gives a shit if movies like this are realistic or make sense in the slightest. Realism is watching footage of my dumb ass paying the late charges on this flick ’cause I watched it so many times without retaining a damn thing. Realism is buying the greatest hits album of a band you already have all the CDs by just ’cause your so well-trained you figure, “Why stop now?” Realism is figuring out it’s easier just to rent this movie even though it’s the same old shit just ’cause it’s easier than thinking of something else to do with your time.