Thursday

I may have mentioned it here before that I like buddy cop movies - such as Stakeout and 48 Hours (although I've never got along that well with Lethal Weapon). Anyway, last night I saw Murder at 1600: Wesley Snipes is a loose cannon detective assigned to solve a murder at the White House. I was expecting terrible, but was mildly surprised by some elements here. Yes, the film was awful, but the plot was a lot more complex and interesting than it should have been. There was potential here, at least, for an interesting drama. The problem was that they went down the buddy cop route, which didn't really suit the material. Of course, another problem was that Snipes doesn't actually have a partner. His fellow detective makes only sporadic appearances, and the Secret Service female agent he's assigned has a bizarre only half-romantic relationship with him. The character Snipes has to play is odd too. He's a loose cannon, as mentioned, never doing things by the book, but he's also sensitive: he's being evicted from the house he lives in, and he makes model replicas of Civil War battles and the early landscape of Washington DC. Yes, you read that right. Bizarre, isn't it? So, something went fundamentally wrong here, that perhaps could have been interesting.