An almost surrealistic treatment of a grim and fascinating real-life murder case - and it could have worked too. But severe script problems and a rare dud performance from Emily Lloyd are damaging minus factors that undermine director Bernard Rose's imagination at every turn. The dialogue is studded with lines that either raise a nervous titter or simply don't advance the drama. And Lloyd's impish portrayal of the showgirl who eggs on an American soldier to murder never captures the vicious, unbalanced nature you expect to see in a character who is clearly meant to revel in the blood and guts of it all. The baby-faced Kiefer Sutherland is convincing by comparison as the gang-connected lieutenant who may not be what he seems; and Patsy Kensit even better as his English rose on the side. By use of glitzy images, Rose emphasises the glamour the girl sees in crime, and the fact that the two central characters live in fantasy worlds that help make their crimes possible. And his re-creation of the (wartime) period and its atmosphere is the perfection we've - unfairly - come to take for granted in recent times.


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