Take generous helpings of Antonioni's Blow Up and Coppola's The Conversation, add a dash of Hitchcock's Rear Window, stir very slowly, bake for two hours, and what you get is this leaden cinematic souffle consisting mostly of hot air from Brian DePalma. A Foley artist (a blank John Travolta) is out collecting sound effects in Central Park when he witnesses a horrific car crash. After pulling the lone survivor from the wreckage (a worse than blank Nancy Allen) he discovers the other passenger was the front-runner in the presidential election and starts suspecting foul play. I like Brian DePalma, there are images from his films (mainly Sisters and Carrie) that are hard to forget. But the man takes himself way too seriously...I suspect all the "genius" talk that was going on at the time was starting to go to his head. All the things that ruin otherwise good DePalma movies are rampant here: Deadly pacing, bad acting, ridiculous soundtrack, split-screens, nauseating camera moves, and momentum-jarring slow motion. By the time he employed slow motion for what had to be the fifth time, I was fast-forwarding. When the only likable characters are an alcoholic paparazzo/rapist (Dennis Franz) and a serial killer (an all-too-brief John Lithgow) you know things aren't working. Indeed, it is hard to muster up any suspense for the heroine's well-being when you, the audience, has been dreaming of butchering her since she uttered her first line of dialogue. Bloated and highly overrated.
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