Harrison: Cry of the City

It's too bad about this movie. It promises much more than it delivers. The plot ought to be interesting but isn't. The story progresses from scene to scene, sometimes outdoors (the picture was shot partly in New York)and sometimes indoors. But it doesn't matter. Each scene is flatly layed out and consists of a conversation between Harrison, a retired Scotland Yard cop, and somebody else, usually some street crumb. The dialogue has no lilt. There is no humor, except in the occasional wisecrack from Edward Woodward as the cop, and sometimes the wisecracks overreach themselves. Woodward himself is adequate. If you close your eyes he begins to sound like Michael Caine. Alas, he's given nothing to work with here. And he gave an astonishing performance in "The Wicker Man," a terrifying and mythologically informed film that's not to be missed. Even Elizabeth Hurley's presence can't justify watching this. She's mesmerizingly beautiful, true, a kind of darker, more BRUNETTE Jacqueline Bisset, without the incredible eyes. Hurley is Woodward's daughter, about to be married to a cop who resents Woodward's intrusion into the prosecution of a cop killer. And if his future son-in-law protests Woodward's nosiness, the kid's colleagues are positively hostile, sometimes physically so. On the whole the film runs like the pilot for a TV series that was never produced. What a waste.