Look at Your Cigar and Think of Your Daughter

The January Man

"Look at your cigar and think of your daughter."

That's just one of the brilliant pieces of dialogue in this 1989 psychological thriller (and I used that description rather loosely) that tried to be challenging and engaging, but actually succeeded in being incredibly boring and annoying.

In this movie, Kevin Kline plays an ex-cop (Nick Starkey) who is recruited away from his job as a New York City firefighter. He is brought back to serve as a detective on the New York Police Department, serving under his brother, the Police Commissioner (played by Harvey Keitel), who fired him years earlier. Yes, there is a whole lot of time and effort wasted in trying to develop an angle for this movie: two brothers, in competition with each other, the one coveting the other's wife (a former girlfriend, played by Sarandon), both brothers having issues as to who their mother loved the most, etc., ad nauseum. What we have here are all the goofy "Psychology 101" elements that one could possibly think of, all thrown together into a movie stew.

There was an impressive cast of big name stars: Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon, Harvey Keitel, Danny Aiello, and Rod Stieger. Sadly, one can discern, by the expressions and energy they exhibited, that everyone knew that movie was headed for the junk movie heap of video releases. What a bunch of plastic phonies.

If we ignore all the side stories and psychological drama that was put into this stew, what we really have is a story of a serial killer who, during the past eleven months, committed 11 strangulation homicides. When Nick Starkey (Kevin Kline) is brought in to assist the NYPD, he comes to the correct conclusion, after about 48 hours of ground work, that a twelfth murder is going to be attempted in exactly one day. Nick Starkey, as stupid as he may seem, is about as smart as Sherlock Holmes multiplied by the power of 10.


"And then tomorrow, after a good breakfast, you're going to catch the killer and save the girl."

And this, as predicted by the Mayor's daughter and Starkey's new love interest (played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), is exactly what happens. Kline's character, aided by a miraculous piece of computer software that maps each and every high-rise development on Manhattan Island -- which software, incidentally, was developed overnight by an unemployed artist who becomes a computer genius in a matter of minutes -- discovers, at the final hour, with uncanny precision, that a murder was about to be committed. Indeed, via a number of clues -- a series of dates that are keyed to prime numbers, the location of the constellation of Virgo in the night sky, and a bizarre analysis of a seven-note musical composition that turns out to be the start of Neil Sedaka's song, "(I Love, I Love, My) Calendar Girl" -- the 12-month serial killer mystery is solved. (Note: according to the New York City Department of Planning, there are over three-quarters of a million buildings in New York (and all its five Burroughs). That a non-computer programmer can develop a three dimensional map of all properties on Manhattan Island, overnight, just totally stunned me. Wow. Aren't computers amazing?)


Price and Availability
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I purchased this DVD at Fry's Electronics for $10. I thought that I was getting a pretty good deal for a DVD with such a large cast of stars. Additional, special features on this disk include: Standard or 16:9 Widescreen viewing formats; original theatrical trailer; stereo surround sound; French (stereo) or Spanish (mono) language options; plus English, French, or Spanish subtitles.


Recommendations
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Approximate running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Rated "R." Every now and then, I started feeling my eyelids getting heavy. A few brief scenes of female nudity along with some ridiculously staged shouting matches and over-acting featuring Harvey Keitel, Danny Aiello and Rod Steiger kept me from falling asleep. I did not like this movie and do not recommend it. It sucked. A one-star rating is generous.