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Steiger shows his enormous talent in this modest, black and white biopic apparently based on the career of movie pioneer Jesse Lasky, the man who literally invented Hollywood but died forgotten by the industry he helped create.

A young Robert Culp and other stars also are featured with an intelligent script, some memorable dialog and many insights in how today's movie industry came to be. Realistic characters abound in this story of the first producer to film a motion picture in the then unknown corner of Los Angeles County called Hollywood.

Two careers were made--or re-made--by this movie: Eddie Murphy's and Ronny Cox's. By now in his mid forties but well preserved, tall, fair Ronny Cox plays the police commander Lt. Bogomil as an idealized father figure: strict but fair, a loving authority as a father is supposed to be. "In Beverly Hills we do things by the book," he tells Axel Foley, showing this refugee from the Detroit ghetto's dirt and chaos a different world, a clean, orderly world where the police are your friend and you can rely on their integrity. This is an essential element in the success of this film pitched at Blacks and the young, both groups who hunger for the father they often lack in real life.

The best way to watch this picture is with the sound OFF. And no subtitles, either.

The "steamy" lesbian sex scene (with body doubles for the closeups) is topped by hundreds of offerings available every day on the today's internet.

The script is **dumb**, cliché-ridden with not one memorable line in the whole film, and more four-letter profanity than "The Sopranos". It was clearly written not just in a rush but by Hollywood types who have little idea of what Mafia guys really are like or how they operate. The portrayals of Caesar and the rest are grotesquely unconvincing. Nor does it stop there. The butch ex-con Corky also is more caricature than character--just a collection of tattoos and piercings in men's underwear that never adds up to a believable person.

OK, the cinematography and sets are stylish. The producers got the most from a low budget with no money for outdoor scenes so it's **film noir** in color. So what? Gina Gershon never got a part again in a major movie after appearing in this **dreck**.

Even if every queer in the western world gave this picture ten stars on here, Hollywood, like the viewing public, made its own decision and this picture was gone from theaters--those few it ran in--faster than a late night movie crowd.