Murder at 1600 Review
by Andrew Hicks (c667778 AT showme DOT missouri DOT edu)October 14th, 1997
MURDER AT 1600
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1997 Andrew Hicks
(1997) *1/2 (out of four)
There's only one presidential election every four years, but it
seems like every few months we get another presidential conspiracy
movie painted as _the_ thriller of the year. In 1997, we've had
ABSOLUTE POWER, AIR FORCE ONE, SHADOW CONSPIRACY
and MURDER AT 1600. This one is about as lame duck as old Gerald
Ford, trying to bring us a complex plot of cover-up and intrigue but
copping out over and over again with rehashes of action flick
standbys.
Here's what happens this time. It's night at the White House.
A secretary is having sex with some unidentified guy with a cute butt.
The next day she's dead and hotshot detective Wesley Snipes is called
in. How do we know he's a hotshot? We've seen the traditional action
flick opener -- the clever hostage negotiation scene. It's not so clever
this time, consisting of Snipes disarming a suicidal ex-government
employee holding a gun to his head in the middle of the street.
Snipes is off to the White House, where he finds the Secret
Service head (the shiny bald head of Daniel Benzali) won't cooperate
with him at all. In fact, if not for the intervention of National Security
Adviser Alan Alda, Snipes wouldn't have been allowed in the White
House at all. Alda helps Snipes out further, assigning a sexy Secret
Service agent (Diane Lane) to act as his liaison... a very dangerous
liaison. Well, not really, I just wanted to say that.
Almost immediately, a suspect is found, an eccentric night
janitor seen flirting with the deceased on one of the security videos.
Snipes doesn't buy it, and launches into an independent investigation
of his own, one that reveals planted evidence and romantic
involvement by the president's son. Snipes' partner, an always-
wisecracking Dennis Miller, calls him up every once in awhile with
more news and Lane, who at first doesn't believe Snipes, eventually
and predictably comes around, and risks her ass to break into Social
Security storage and break out some classified information.
For the first hour or so, MURDER AT 1600 looks like it
could be going somewhere interesting. Sure, we have to sit through
the lame opening sequence and plenty more lame scenes after that,
but the whole murder in the White House thing makes for an
interesting premise that is never quite delivered upon. Snipes and
Lane don't make for a bad action team, but with nothing to work
with, they're just cogs in the bad movie machine. Dennis Miller
might as well not even be in the movie; they waste his talents more
in MURDER AT 1600 than they did in BORDELLO OF BLOOD, and
that's saying a lot.
When you get to the last half-hour, the movie has descended
metaphorically and literally into a wet sewer, busting out the old
break-into-the-building underground climax. And when they finally
reveal who killed the woman and why, you'll wish you never sat
through this movie at all. The "1600" in the movie's title doesn't
represent an address, it represents the number of satisfied customers
worldwide.
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