Professor Lambert lectures on ethics and morals at a local University and lives alone in a quiet suburban area. However when his neighbour, is accused of war crimes as a Nazi he isn't sure what to think. When he is told that Mueller is about to leave for Ecuador, where he will be free to live out his life without extradition he cannot morally accept it and decides to take action by murdering him. However Lambert's ethics and need for justice soon cause the whole plan to crumble in a moral mess.
I'd never heard of this film when I watched it but Dan Aykroyd is usually an OK bet even if he's not as funny as Bill Murray often manages. However after watching this I understand why I hadn't heard of it. The plot is OK at the start but the moral reasoning that drives much of the latter stages doesn't ring true and it feels like the film is just trying to muddle through to a very unsatisfactory ending that also feels like they weren't sure how it should end so they just stopped!
As a drama it doesn't work at all, sadly as a comedy it has no laughs at all. Not a smile, I assumed it was a bad drama until a glance at the listings told me it was meant to be a comedy! A misguided drama I can understand, but to pitch something so lame as a comedy is beyond justification.
The cast are wasted here. Names like Tomlin, Lemmon, Aykroyd and Adler really need better material than this to show what they can do. Here they do the best they can but they can turn a sow's ear into a purse.
Overall this is a failed comedy and a drama that is failing with every plot step. The end result is a film that is neither funny or dramatic it is merely mediocre and very dull.
