Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Too many 'Red' herrings Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 14:23:38 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE;MOVIES \HD Too many 'Red' herrings \SH Film's foul play tricks audience \BY Gary Arnold \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES The title of "Traces of Red," a systematically lurid and expedient murder melodrama, alludes to bloodstains and lipstick smears. The former turn up most conspicuously on the naked torsos of buxom murder victims. In fact, one of the cast members, Katheryn Culliver Pierce, appears exclusively as a pinup corpse. The lipstick traces decorate envelope flaps on anonymous, threatening letters mailed to Jim Belushi, cast as a West Palm Beach homicide cop named Jack Dobson, suspiciously given to sexual dalliance with most of the victims. Sample insert: "You only do it/To hurt me more/Live by your lies/Die by my cord." The movie itself dies from a chronic inability to play fair with the audience while hustling to prolong doubt about the identity of the author of such pathetic verse. Screenwriter Jim Piddock, who makes a brief appearance as a totally pointless informant during a side trip to the Florida Keys, succumbs to the whodunit trap of salting the plot with clues, twists and suspects conceived in shameless bad faith. Numerous episodes perpetrate hoaxes devised solely to mislead us. They wouldn't be necessary to achieve the aims of the characters if we didn't happen to be eavesdropping - and susceptible to misinformation. As a result, "Traces of Red" leaves big muddy footprints all over the scenes of its crimes. These commence with a prologue that lifts the flashback narrative gambit of "Sunset Boulevard": pretending to tell the story from the point of view of a corpse. There's scarcely a character that fails to arouse suspicion, for the purposes of gratuitous deception. Among the more prominent characters, Mr. Belushi is always suspicious because of his clandestine affairs with the victims. Tony Goldwyn, cast as his sidekick, Steve Frayn, is suspicious because he was the sneaky guy in "Ghost." Mr. Belushi also betrays a yen for Mr. Goldwyn's wife, Beth, played by Faye Grant. Mr. Goldwyn seems to have something percolating with Melanie Tomlin, a campaign worker for Mr. Belushi's older brother, a state senatorial candidate played by William Russ. The ambitious Mike Dobson is automatically suspicious because he's an office seeker and wears a flag pin in his lapel. Both cops consort with a society slut named Ellen Schofield, portrayed by the dread Lorraine Bracco, confirming the recent impressions left by "Medicine Man" and "Radio Flyer" that she, not Sean Young or Melanie Griffith, is the most clueless movie actress currently loitering around the American screen. RUNNING TIME: About 105 minutes MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM