A grim, disheartening view of the underside of city life, Q & A is a legal drama with a disturbing twist. Not exactly a whodunit--the guilt of policeman Nick Nolte is established early on--the plot follows the closing of the circle around him. Leading the murder investigation is Timothy Hutton's young, idealistic district attorney Al Reilly, who finds himself battling a fraudulent and cynical culture. Racism, corruption, and political machinations are all added to the mix, resulting in a film that is just a little too dense and slow-moving to capture the imagination.
Director Sidney Lumet creates a feeling of enveloping darkness around Hutton, who slowly manages to let the light in and bring the truth to the surface. With an obviously small budget, the film has more of a made-for-television feel than that of a big blockbuster and some of the performances err too much on the side of cliché. The concept of the New York melting pot is fairly effectively dismissed by the film, painting a picture of distrust between communities that often spills into violence, both verbal and physical. Not quite as unremittingly bleak as Harvey Kietel's Bad Lieutenant, Q & A is still a tough, dark piece of cinema. --Phil Udell
2.
Taking its title from the stenographer's record in a criminal investigation, Sidney Lumet's brutal look at police corruption peers at the rotten center of crime-fighting institutions and spotlights one man's naïve attempt to intervene. Timothy Hutton is young District Attorney Al Reilly, called in on a cut and dry case. In the seemingly simple investigation of the shooting of a Puerto Rican drug lord by supposed model cop Brennan (Nick Nolte), Reilly discovers telling inconsistencies and delves further. Despite the stern advice from Chief of Homicide Quinn to resolve the case and quickly clear Brennan, the older cop's suspicious behavior and conflicting stories spur Reilly to delve further. Reilly's former fiancée, Nancy, complicates matters because she is now involved with the prime witness, Bobby Texador (Armand Assanté). With this emotional baggage, Reilly uncovers a vast web of corruption stretching from Manhattan to Puerto Rico that leads all the way to Quinn. Brennan realizes that Reilly is on to him, and he becomes ruthless, stopping at nothing to prevent the truth from surfacing. The gritty and poisonous world of hardened urban cops surfaces as Lumet illustrates the crusading Reilly's uncompromising honesty against the landscape of racism, lies, and illicit allegiances that lurk below every surface of the city.
3.
When The Questions Are Dangerous The Answers Can Be Deadly.
In streets burning with hatred, corruption and violence, there walks a powder keg with a short fuse called Brennan. When Brennan shoots a small-time crook in cold blood, he covers up the shooting as self-defense and Assistant D.A. Reilly is assigned to the investigation. Brennan's innocence rests on a clean Q & A but innocence is hard to prove when key witnesses become murder victims. Someone is trying to cover for Brennan and may succeed, unless one surviving witness takes the stand: gangster, drug-runner and racketeer Bobby Texador. Texador, Brennan and Reilly are as far apart as you can get when it comes to ideals - but when it comes to murder, invisible threads are drawing them together, tightening a noose around somebody's neck-but whose?
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