At the end of the previous year's Hard Times, Burt Reynolds has decided to take the fall for partner Charles Durning. It means one-to-five years in prison. Since he's an ex-cop, he can't be in the general population, so they stick him on Death Row, between Roscoe Lee Browne, who has grown philosophical, and Bruce Dern, who keeps talking about his crazy dreams. When Reynolds gets out, he stays in the back room of Paul Bartel's bar, with the huge mastiff, and refuses to have anything to do with Durning. But the police come to him: it turns out that Dern's rambling about his dreams are absolutely accurate in predicting a current serial killer. He won't talk to anyone but Reynolds, and he won't talk to Reynolds until one man is released from prison, and Dern's daughter, Gigi Rice, visits him in prison. Which she refuses to do.
TNT thought they had a shot at respectability with these made-for-TV movies starring Reynolds, but Reynolds isn't putting much effort into it, adding quizzical comic interpretations of his lines; frankly, with the heavy-handed depression that director David Cass Sr. Invests the movie, a little comic relief is welcome. But it makes such a hash of Reynolds' character, that there's no dramatic tension in the character arcs. You know everyone and everything is going to come around all right in the end. Except for the unseen victims of the serial killers.
TNT thought they had a shot at respectability with these made-for-TV movies starring Reynolds, but Reynolds isn't putting much effort into it, adding quizzical comic interpretations of his lines; frankly, with the heavy-handed depression that director David Cass Sr. Invests the movie, a little comic relief is welcome. But it makes such a hash of Reynolds' character, that there's no dramatic tension in the character arcs. You know everyone and everything is going to come around all right in the end. Except for the unseen victims of the serial killers.