The Swap

In 1969 a young Robert De Niro starred in a drama called Sam's Song. It didn't make much in the way of profit but it got him noticed. Ten years later, a filmmaker wanted to get De Niro onto his project but didn't have the resources to do it. So he took to stealing much of Sam's Song & incorporating it into his own film. The result was The Swap.

Vito Nicoletti is released from prison after serving a twelve year sentence. He is on a mission to find out who killed his younger brother Sam ten years before. Meeting up with his late brother's friends, Vito finds that Sam was a porn filmmaker & had an underage girlfriend before he was killed. After a few close calls on his life, Vito sits down to watch the films that Sam had made in an effort to understand the murder. But upon watching the films, Vito realises that he had already met the killer.

The Swap was a complete disaster in terms of story-telling. When De Niro found out about the film's existence, he nearly launched a lawsuit. But this cheap thriller is so poor that it cancels itself out, leaving it to be relatively obscure today. The main problem is that De Niro's character is turned from a young romantic lead into a pornographer & a paedophile thanks to whoever wrote the film's script. This is part of why the film fails to entertain. Anthony Charnota makes a poor hero but at least he takes himself & his work seriously despite his gruff demeanor. Lisa Blount, about three years away from making a slightly better impression in the zombie film DEAD & BURIED makes a strangely cold love interest / sidekick to Charnota's ex-con.