Hardboiled private eye John Travolta tussles with corrupt casino owner Morgan Freeman in a thriller whose biggest mystery is its plot
John Travolta stars in this ridiculous and mostly boring hardboiled thriller (AKA The Poison Rose), playing a private detective investigating the disappearance of a woman from a psychiatric hospital. The web of interlinked crimes he unravels barely makes any sense and there are some epically pointless plot twists – one left me so baffled that I wondered if I might’ve momentarily nodded off and missed a scene. It’s a film with no energy, not much pace and few signs of life. It’s exhausting to watch.
Travolta goes beyond “world-weary” to give an almost vegetative performance as Carson Phillips, a PI in the poker-playing, bourbon-drinking tradition. In his youth, Phillips was the star quarterback on the local
Football team but skipped town after a scandal. Back in
Texas for the first time in a couple of decades, he gets short shrift at the hospital where the patient has vanished. The doctor in charge (Brendan Fraser) shiftily evades his inquiries and the nurses shoot each other alarmed looks. Morgan Freeman plays casino owner Doc, the richest man in town and clearly not to be trusted. (Like everyone else here, Freeman puts his feet up, taking a breather from doing decent acting.)