I shall confess immediately that the main reason I rented this movie was to have a look at Reese Witherspoon's "break-out" role (she was a sophomore at Stanford when she was cast for this role, moved to LA and never looked back). Miss Witherspoon is prominently featured in the opening few minutes (with some of her features famously quite prominent)but she otherwise does not factor much into the film. At a crucial moment in these opening scenes she accidentally shoots Paul Newman (a Private Investigator sent to retrieve 17 year-old Reese from a weekend of concupiscence with her slightly older boyfriend at a resort in Mexico). Her little girl-like panicked and blurtingly apologetic reaction- eyes like saucers, hand against the mouth- to this incident embodies every/any character Miss Witherspoon has portrayed on screen thus far (including, presumably the girl in "Sweet Home Alabama", which I have not yet seen). It was quite an illuminating moment for those interested in her career.
Onward, however, to the subject at hand: the movie itself. When cast in 1998, as I mentioned, Miss Witherspoon was just another young aspiring actress in California. The rest of the cast is like a Who's Who of established Hollywood stars, which in and of itself makes for an entertaining film, despite a certain severe weakness to the story and direction, which conspire to make the plot really only of incidental interest to the viewer.
Paul Newman, looking every bit as aged as he is supposed to be, is cast as a retired Los Angeles police officer, Private Investigator, husband and alcoholic. Ever since the shooting incident in Mexico, he has been staying as the houseguest of the wealthy actor and actress (Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandan) who had dispatched him on that mission. Mr. Hackman's character is ill, and Miss Saradan's character is very seductive towards their guest/companion/gofer. When an ostensibly simple task for Mr. Newman's character(an apparent blackmail pay-off on behalf of Gene Hackman)takes the film into a new direction as a mystery, James Garner (old Jim Rockford himself) saunters into the script as well as an old friend of Gene Hackman's, and former police force colleague of Newman's. Stockard Channing (Rizzo, of "Grease") appears as well as an LAPD Lieutenant, and former partner (among other duties) of the Newman character.
The plot wanders along about blackmailers, the mysterious disappearance of Susan Sarandon's first husband twenty years before, remote mountain cabins and the efforts of Newman to piece things together. A former "partner" is miraculously brought into the action when the plot requires, and dead bodies continue to accumulate while Newman, now in a "Rockford-like" mode struggles to solve the riddle before the LAPD haul him in. It's more like a TV movie mystery at this point than anything else, but that's not entirely bad.
I think some important scenes or pieces of dialogue must have ended up on the cutting room floor, but it's easy enough to follow the trail and guess who really did what back then, and how it will turn out before the closing credits. Reese's topless scenes were rather gratuitous and not necessary to the story, and now that she's America's newest sweetheart and movie star, (not to mention noted wife and mommy)will probably never be repeated on the silver screen again. The twilight of the careers of the older established actors has been eclipsed by the dawning of Reese's star. It's interesting to watch, and the movie's not all that bad either.
