'THE JANUARY MAN'...........NYC QUIRK 'N CORPSES.....

The January Man (1989)    We always though this movie shared some DNA with Peter Yates' 1981 "Eyewitness" (which we covered in a previous post).......in that it sets its thriller plot in motion among the edgy, quirky, sharp-tongued denizens of New York City......

            But unlike the seriously oddball romance at the heart of "Eyewitness", "The January Man" veers into screwball comedy......a bold move, considering it already has a pile of soap opera-ish subplots strewn around its main storyline...... an unconventional detective's hunt for a serial strangler of women.....

             Kevin Kline brings in all his sprightly wit to play this nonconforming cop, who's become an NYC firefighter after absorbing an unjust corruption charge on behalf of his weasel politico brother (a relatively subdued Harvey Keitel)

               And just to stir the pot a little more, Kline has a romantic fling history with Keitel's wife (Susan Sarandon)......cue the "Days Of Our Lives" theme music......

               Kline is soon drafted back into the police (much to the chagrin of his volcanic superior (the volcanic Danny Aiello)......called upon by the nuclear-meltdown tempered Mayor (Rod Steiger) to catch the January Man, who's just recently choked the life out of the socialite friend of the Mayor's daughter (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio).

              An expected lumpy mixture of wry humor, police procedural and charming romance unfolds, none of it blending together all that well.......Keitel simmers with unresolved resentment of Kline, Aiello and Steiger regularly blow their tops (Steiger's cartoon-ish  tirades have no discernible purpose other than to juice up the clips in the movie's trailer)....and Kline and Mastrantonio fall in love....

               In the midst of all this precious overacting, the film is easily stolen by, of all people, Alan Rickman, playing Kline's bohemian artist pal, recruited to help crack the case.  Rickman's dry, subtle underplaying trumps all the heavy-lifting
hams populating the cast.......he gets the only real laughs without even trying.

                 Writer John Patrick Shanley ("Moonstruck") juggles way too many genre balls in the air here, dropping most of them. You can tell thrillers aren't his forte......Kline's Sherlockian deductions to identify the strangler's next victim are beyond ridiculous, as well his ill-conceived plan to use Mastrantonio as bait for the killer......outfitting her with a plastic collar to prevent having her neck wrung.....love means never having to say you got your girlfriend murdered.........

                 Watchable for the stellar cast but unworkable on every level, we'll barely choke out 2 stars (**) for "The January Man"......okay, only if you've got nothing better to watch....

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