1992's "The Heart of Justice" was a prestigious TV movie from Turner Network Television, boasting a solid cast of veterans in mostly brief appearances, led in the opening scene by Dennis Hopper and Vincent Price, two longtime friends enjoying a last luncheon together in their exclusive club before Hopper's Austin Blair is unceremoniously shot to death once he leaves. The assassin is Elliot Burgess (Dermot Mulroney), an introverted violinist who has formed an unusually close bond with gorgeous sister Emma (Jennifer Connelly), one that dirtbag Blair seemingly knows about and has revealed all the skeletons in the Burgess family closet in his latest work of gossip fiction. Hot shot reporter David Leader (Eric Stoltz) is given the green light to compose a series of articles designed to leave the other newspapers envious, using his contacts to dig further into the background of the Burgess patriarch (Bradford Dillman), who always wanted his pampered son to follow in his law practice footsteps. Only after making contact with Emma does David receive a number of cassette tapes narrated by the obviously deranged killer, all spelling out the motives behind the murder, drawn out over several weeks in a coldly calculated style. It doesn't really qualify as a mystery since the crime takes place barely two minutes into the picture (even before the credits roll!), and because the protagonist is a self serving jerk deserving of less pity than even the perpetrator, viewers are left with an exercise of style over substance, less and less involving as the picture drags on toward its painfully obvious conclusion. What one is left with are the little character vignettes, in particular the final screen role for 80 year old Vincent Price (shooting in October 1991), whose Reggie Shaw describes himself as 'a charming old fart' who enjoys time spent with old friends, and whose real life relationship with Dennis Hopper makes their sequence stand out; both had first worked together in 1956 on the Irwin Allen production "The Story of Mankind," and had recently reunited for Hopper's directorial outing "Backtrack" aka "Catchfire" (oddly enough, this would also prove the last feature role for Bradford Dillman, spending his final three decades in blissful retirement).
Review of The Heart of Justice
