By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * * *)
For Jack Nicholson fans, this is as good as it gets. For Hollywood movies, maybe, this is as good as it gets.
Sean Penn directs Nicholson for the second time (after The Crossing Guard) in what seems, at first, just another cop-hunts-serial-killer story. Detective
Jerry Black (Nicholson) is retiring when the call comes in: a girl's mutilated body has been found. The old-fashioned police-man, on his last day, finds himself telling the parents and swearing to find her killer.
The case seems closed when a Native American (Benicio del Torres), seen running from the scene, is picked up and confesses, then grabs a gun and shoots himself.
Black doesn't think that's the answer. Retired, he continues to investigate, finding that the dead girl had made friends with a ÒgiantÓ she called the Wizard. Who was this man? Was he the killer? Had he killed other children?
Now Penn twists the plot and lifts the tension. Black buys a gas station between two towns where he thinks the Wizard might have worked his black magic, thinking he knows the killer's vehicle. The servo is a trap.
At the same time Black meets a mother (Robin Wright Penn) and her daughter and, after a couple of divorces, falls into a happy domestic life. Surely he wouldn't use the little girl as bait?
By now his former police colleagues think their old mate has gone round the twist. Thanks to Penn and Nicholson, you may soon think so, too, and by the end of the movie you will not care so much about whether he finds the killer but what has happened to him along the way.
* DVD features: movie (124 mins); theatrical trailer.
* Rental video, DVD: Today
