**SPOILERS** Really bizarre crime thriller about this mentally unbalanced kook who believes himself to be the reincarnation of legendary escape artist Harry Houdini. This concentration camp survivor looking like individual goes by the name, no big surprise here, of Harry played by a emaciated looking skin and bones, a body that's perfect in escaping from straight-jackets and handcuffs, Adrien Brody.
Together with his partner in crime Greg "Handsome" Evens, Michael Henderson, Harry kidnaps both Frances Hannon, Laila Robins, and her pet Pooh,played by Duke the Dog, as she was out walking him outside her luxury apartment house one afternoon in Midtown Manhattan. Held for one million dollars in ransom money Harry demands from Frances' millionaire art collector husband Clark, James Naughton, that if he doesn't get the cash by 6:00 Am the next morning she'll be dead; Dying from suffocation by being buried alive in some unknown location outside the city limits.
The movie starts to get really strange when NYPD lady Det. Madeline "Maddy" Foster, Maura Tierney, is put on the case. With the police and Det. Foster casing out the money drop at the Queens Cemetery, where Harry Houdini just happens to be buried, Harry-the Psycho-leaves himself wide open to be captured by walking right into the trap that the police set for him. After a French Connection style car case thorough the city Harry is finally captured and put into police custody. It's then when we finally realize what exactly Harry's motives in kidnapping Frances, and her pet pooch, really were! They turned out to be just as crazy and unpredictable as he is!
We also get to see Det. Foster's dark and secret life as a S&M freak that she's been keeping from her boss in the NYPD as well as husband Capt. Tim Foster, Terry Kinney. This strange and destructive lifestyle is quickly picked up by, who's very obviously into S&M himself, Det. Foster's captive Harry! With that knowledge in mind Harry does everything he can to get under Det. Foster's skin making her job, in finding the buried alive France's Hannon and her Pooch, much harder then it already is.
***SPOILER ALERT*** We soon get to find out just that the not all there upstairs Harry really wanted to get himself caught in order to prove that he, like his hero Harry Houdini, can escape from any situation he finds himself in. Like being locked up in a jail cell in a New York City police station! Harry also uses his knowledge of Let. Foster's hang ups, as being into S&M, to cause her to lose her cool by hinting to her hubby Capt. Tim what a crazy freak he's married too. In the end Harry like most nut-cases like himself overplayed his hand in thinking that he's, not the NYPD, in control of what's going on in the movie. That leads to Harry ending up just where he put Frances, in a pine box, with him not worried about suffocating to death because of lack of oxygen because by then he wouldn't really need it anyway!
P.S Earlier in the film there's a big chase scenes under the Brooklyn West-End elevated subway line that starts at the 62nd Steet station. It's that very same subway station where the exciting car chase in the film "The French Connection" ended with NYPD Det. Popeye Doyle gunning down his attempted assassin Frog #2 after chasing him down, after he derailed the hijacked subway train that he commandeered, and trapping him there!
