Q & A (1990)

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 Amazon.com

oh boy

Apart from establishing the premises of the plot, I didn't find the first hour or so all that intriguing - quite the contrary actually. The relationship story between Hutton and his ex-girlfriend was appalling. Those scenes played out like a bad soap-opera and had me fearing the worst for what was to come. Lumet should have kept his daughter out of it (and all scenes relating to it). It took a while for me to get used to Nolte as the bad guy too, as I've never seen him play the full-on villain before (he's usually the hard-edged good guy). He was as over-the-top as many of the other players in this cop corruption movie (doesn't Sidney Lumet do anything besides cop-corruption movies?) , and there were times when I could swear Timothy Hutton was trying to remember his lines.

Surprisingly, I actually found myself getting interested for a while somewhere near the last third of the movie when "character development" and the study of racism fade out to actual plot. Actually got interested to see if they were gonna nail him as the setting shifted over to Cuba and I had to pay attention less to "character performances" and got to see more story-line action. There are still too many names and subplots though which would probably make more sense if you were insane enough to watch it a second time. Some pretty sordid *#%&! thrown in as well for good measure. If I'd paid attention more maybe I'd have got more from it (but I doubt it). It was painful to watch much of the time to be truthful. This movie tries to take itself very seriously but there were moments near the end where I was almost ready to laugh.

I think the Amazon reviewer does a pretty fair job with this one. It starts off with some interest, smoulders under lame stereotype scenarios for the next hour, actually starts moving fast again as the ending approaches, but then loses it's pace and continues to get lost in names and convoluted action until, until.. I'm surprised I made it to the end actually. This movie had a bad kind of amateurish feel to it and it just kept going on and on like this review if I don't stop. Now I can go to bed. I thank the powers that be that it's over. I know there are bad things in the world, but this movie is surely one of them. March 12, 2008

Q & A

Excellent performances by the three leading actors two of them with well defined roles, the third one, Nolte, at the line between bad and good with a clear definition of values at the end. March 12, 2007

A difficult investigation..

Well directed film with amazing performance by Nick Nolte...
Nolte gives one of the most scary performances of a bad cop ever...
Conveys the complexity and superficial front of a corrupt police officer...
Timothy Hutton is also very good as a new guy who is assigned to the case...

February 16, 2007

Those in the white hats don't always win

Nick Nolte plays a tough cop who plays rough but always gets his man. He is much respected by all his companions and bosses. However, all is not what it seems because sometimes things come out his way because he fixes them so they do. There is a chain of corruption going all the way to the top and of course the inevitable chief looking to be appointed governor. Poor Al does what he can to trap Nick Nolte's character and despite the deaths of various shady characters who "won't be missed" he does it but all ends in a great disappointment for him when the "Powers that Be" decide that the best thing would be to forget all about it and let everything carry on as before. He complies because he is "blackmailed" by the department threatening to bring out some of the shady dealings of his late father which would reduce the pension to which his mother is entitled. August 16, 2006

A movie from my youth revisted.

I've been an avid movie watcher and fan - especially of action movies - since I was in 5th or 6th grade. I remember begging my Mom to take me to see "Lethal Weapon," but she had reservations about her 9 year old seeing such things. One way or another, I won out and as we watched the movie together she slowly realized I was able to handle such a movie and, looking back, this was where I became a true film buff. Soon after, all gloves were off. Next came "Die Hard" and Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Steven Seagal movies. I used to wait impatiently for the weekends to roll around so I could get to the local Pick-N-Save video store and rent the latest releases. So much so, they knew me there - like, who was this kid and how can he possibly understand or enjoy half the titles he rents? I mention all this because "Q & A" was one movie I remember picking up the box countless times at the Pick-N-View, not knowing the actors, or even understanding that the title meant "question and answer;" I thought it was two guy's names, like "Tango & Cash," but I always felt drawn to it. I passed it over again and again in my youth. But a few years ago I got on a Nick Nolte kick, for some reason, and realized I had never actually seen this movie. Imagine my regret when suddenly this movie, that I held the VHS box of over and over again as a kid, was suddenly hard to come across. So more years went by and from time to time this movie would pop into my mind, but I could never find it. Then yesterday I was at Wal-Mart and there was a display of movies for $3.88. "Q & A" was one of them. Now, $3.88 is less than a rental fee, not to mention I may have been willing to pay even more for it just because I couldn't believe after all this time of not seeing it anywhere, there it was.

It's probably a good thing that I did not pick this one up as a kid because it is not the action movie that I thought it looked to be. Years later, after becoming a huge fan of "NYPD Blue" and that type of police drama (character driven, gritty, and realistic) sometime in the last 10 years or so was probably the best time to finally watch this movie.

That was a long preamble to a simple review. "Q & A" is extremely well written. The dialog, situations and characters feel completely life-like. The movie grabs you from the start, and even though there are no big action sequences, you remain enthralled and entertained by the story itself. Unfortunately, the movie does not sustain those attributes. What is a fascinating character study for the first hour and a half soon wears thin and turns to clichés. The movie is over-long anyway, so it would have solved two problems by cutting out a half hour or so. I would argue it could use a shot of adrenaline, but I think if it were a tight 90 to 100 minutes, trimming the fat and leaving the best stuff in, all the adrenaline that is needed is provided by the dialog, story and performances. The movie is also interesting as an inter-racial interaction character study. But after the 90 minute mark or so, everything goes over the top in a way that a gritty, real life drama just should not do. And the movie is no more exciting or action packed for it, so why bother. Certain subplots could also have been jettisoned.

Over all this is a flawed, but still compelling film that's worth a look; especially if you are a fan of gritty, dialog and character driven police procedurals. They just needed an editor and/or a script doctor for the final third of the film. But I can say this: "Q & A" is easily the best DVD I have ever purchased for $3.88. It's also the only one, but worth every penny. Ten bucks? I'm not so sure.

If you dig this film, or this TYPE of movie, also try "Serpico," "Bad Lieutenant," "Cop Land," "Narc," "Dark Blue," and the recently released (as of this writing) "Dirty" and "16 Blocks."
June 15, 2006

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