A slow, sad, low-key, cleverly put-together police detective story, with Joe Mantegna as the Jewish cop who considers himself expendable and an outsider; so he is ready meat for a group of Jewish activists when their organisation crops up in a murder case to which he's almost accidentally assigned. The sombre classical music background tends to make you think this is about anti-Semitism. But writer/director David Mamet is too cunning to leave it at that, and that proves merely a cloak for the real story - of how easily men can be manipulated and ruined by their own backgrounds. If only Mamet the writer had assigned somebody to direct who could have upped the pace, this might have been a little classic.


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