In Phillip Noyce's brilliant Newsfront, which he directed in 1978 in his
native Australia, the villain is a swaggering media maven who's made his
fortune selling out his considerable talents in America. It's hard not to feel
the irony now that Noyce, after the splendid 1989 on-the-ocean noir Dead
Calm, has come to Hollywood and made his fortune with a series of competent
but not especially personal or memorable big-budget assignments, including
Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games, Sliver, and
The Saint.
His latest is a slick, intermittently effective, occasionally ghoulish genre
thriller that squeaks by on the charisma of the two leads. We get an hour and a
half in bed with Denzell Washington, who plays a New York detective
specializing in forensics who's now a quadriplegic because of an accident on
the job. From under the sheets, this paralyzed op conducts an investigation to
locate a Silence of the Lambs-style serial killer, and he's helped by
Angelina Jolie's street-smart (and incredibly good-looking) policewoman. She's
threatened when out in the city; he's endangered when the killer comes calling
at his bedside. Married with Children's dumbed-down dad, Ed O'Neill,
co-stars as a cop, and Queen Latifah is a bedside nurse named Thelma, in
obvious homage to the performance of Thelma Ritter in The Bone
Collector's many-times-better source, Alfred Hitchcock's Rear
Window.
--Gerald Peary
Full Length Reviews
The Bone Collector 
The Bone Collector 
Capsule Reviews
The Bone Collector 
Other Films by Phillip Noyce
Clear and Present Danger 
The Saint 
Film Vault Suggested Links
The Phantom 
The Avengers 
U.S. Marshals 
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