This low-life urban drama is a remake of the Hollywood-funded, British-based 1950 thriller with Richard Widmark. In the Nineties, his hustler, Harry Fabian, is played by Robert De Niro and has become a lawyer straight out of the Marx Brothers' Shyster, Flywheel and Shyster. Typical advice to a client is: 'If you want to walk in Central Park, leave the baseball bat at home.' Becoming involved with mobsters, an affair with his barman's wife (Jessica Lange) and the shadier end of the boxing world, Harry Fabian is clearly not destined for a dull, long or happy life. Despite De Niro's non-stop performance, however, and a veritable barrage of street language, this version of his downfall lacks dramatic weight and punch, and is further weakened by a softening of the original ending, which was unusually bleak by Fifties' standards.

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