An unusual film for crime connoisseurs, appropriately set in 1942. There hadn't been a film about a sensation-hungry photographer in many years: this darkly-shaded example spotlights Joe Pesci as the shutterbug with pretensions to recognition, a sad little whippet of a man who's always first on the scene at fires, killings, car crashes and other tragedies. Human suffering is stamped on all his work but no one will publish his portfolio of front-page sensations. Depressed, Pesci is putty in the hands of femme fatale Kay (Barbara Hershey) who runs her late husband's nightclub but is worried about his Mob connections. When one of them turns up dead after Pesci knocks on his door at Kay's behest, the little man opens up a whole well of worms that looks as if it might suck him right down inside. Pesci catches exactly the vulnerability beneath the camera hotshot's cockiness. Hershey is particularly good as the flame to his moth, no better than she ought to be but no worse. It's an impressive piece of work on an offbeat but constantly absorbing theme.


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