Very well executed

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Sidney Lumet is something of a maker of modern classics, he's the guy other directors imitate to the point of plagiarism. Elements in other films that are considered clichés are originals in his work.Q&A looks and feels old school from the very first scenes. The sets inside the police precinct are especially realistic, although I've never been in a New York police station. All of the actors look the part even more. Timothy Hutton was definitely the weakest link in the acting chain, but you can't blame Lumet for that. Hutton was hot back then. Nolte was at his best, and his best was pretty good.

Sidney Lumet does what he does best. Tell a story about law and order in New York and look into police corruption.Timothy Hutton plays Reilly, a young former cop turned assistant district attorney asked by the police commissioner (Patrick O'Neal) to look into the shooting of a Puerto Rican criminal by detective Brennan (Nick Nolte) who claims it was self defence. The commissioner tells him that its an open and shut case and also tells him that if its not in the Q&A then it did not happen.However Hutton is determined and finds flaws in Brennan's story and the case leads him to a charismatic Puerto Rican crime boss called Bobby Tex (Armand Assante) whose wife was once Hutton's girlfriend until he discovered she was mixed race.It looks like Brennan is an out of control cop who is trying to get rid of some select criminals on behalf of someone at the top. The commissioner turns out to be a hypocrite as he later tells Hutton that he is taking the Q&A too seriously.Nolte gives a larger than live performance as the foul mouthed, racist, homophobic, brutish cop who is a legend in the department. The first one through the door and is willing to break the law if necessary. His fellow cops know better to cross him and have to put up with his jibes. However he does not run away with the acting stakes as he is matched by Assante and Hutton.Assante gives a scene stealing performance as the drug dealer who just wants to get out of the business alive. He knows Brennan is dangerous and frankly he knows too much hence why he wants out. This was an era when Assante looked to have broken through and had a good run of films in the early 1990s.Timothy Hutton could had been a brat packer in the early 1980s. He was a contemporary of Tom Cruise, Sean Penn but separated from them early on for the simple reason by 1981 he was a best supporting actor Oscar winner. Since then Hutton decided to work with acclaimed directors or make interesting even offbeat films. The result is he might not be as well known today to cinema audiences but he has had a varied filmography.Here Hutton plays the earnest ADA who is out to cross swords with Brennan but he himself is flawed. His father was a cop and might had been on the take. His treatment of his former girlfriend suggests he might also be a racist himself.This is a moderately budget, moody, noir thriller. Ruben Blades matches the mood with his soundtrack. Director Sidney Lumet was in the twilight of his career and this was maybe his last great film. Of course he was probably jaded with the criminal justice system by then and you always sense the film has a cynical and depressed air about it. That the system is rotten to the core and cannot be fixed.Lumet gets his actors to pull out top performances and even some of the minor characters make their mark.

Q&A casts Nick Nolte as a hero supercop who is known for cutting corners to get results. The film opens with him doing his own gangland style execution of a Puerto Rican drug dealer. But given his status in the NYPD he's expecting a clean bill of health. As it is a homicide and the Chief of the Homicide Bureau in the New York County DA's office Patrick O'Neal assigns young ADA Timothy Hutton fresh to the Bureau on his first case there. O'Neal much like the Navy in A Few Good Men expecting Tom Cruise to plea bargain the defendants, expects Hutton to do a perfunctory job and clear Nolte. And why not, Hutton is a former cop who went to law school at night to get his degree and he's the son of a former colleague of Nolte's.But Hutton has a string of idealism in him and that complicates matters all around. So do the homicide cops assigned to investigate Nolte and both know him, Charles S. Dutton and Luis Guzman. Also Hutton has an unknown connection to one of the chief witnesses Armand Assante who is another drug dealer, but way up on the scale. He's now married to a woman Hutton used to see when he was a beat cop in the 23rd precinct which is Spanish Harlem played by Jenny Lumet.Director Sidney Lumet loves New York even the dark underbelly of the Big Apple. We've never seen it so systemically corrupt as it is in Q&A. In many ways the most idealistic character in the film is that played by Armand Assante. Another good character is that of Lee Richardson who plays an investigator with the DA's office who has learned to bend and not let things break him. O'Neal has a vested interest in this outcome, but it's one I couldn't get my mind wrapped around. Still he is chillingly malevolent and has big political ambitions. Hutton has a vested interest as well, he's part of the corruption though he doesn't realize it until the end.Nolte is one out of control racist, homophobic cop who like so many homophobes has those latent tendencies in him. Check his interaction with some of the gay and transgender folks involved in this case. Q&A is not one of Lumet's best films, still his all seeing camera makes New York itself part of the cast and he gets some great performances from his ensemble.

The one thing Q & A has going for it the entire time is in the form of its atmosphere; it's utterly, utterly effective atmosphere that is very much present due to one thing: we know exactly what the character of Brennan (Nolte) has done but Reilly (Hutton), who is supposed to find out exactly what the situation is, doesn't. This is an interesting idea and a bit of a spin to put on the pretty bog-standard situation of your standard, 1980s to early 1990s internal affairs cop thriller. What works is that we, the audience, have a position of power that the characters in the film do not; thus the hero (Reilly) has to work things out but we don't, however we will be with him all the way to see if he is able to crack it. Alternatively, what the audience do know is exactly what Brennan knows which perhaps lures the audience into false identification.I think director Lumet, who is certainly well accomplished; most definitely by the time this was made, wanted to make a bit of a noir out of this idea. He shoots the film in such a way that has the hero go on his own personal quest of discovery, even if that discovery is one he might not even want to discover given the truth behind it; Lumet also injects several different types of characters into the story: the hard bodied cop in Brennan who is harder than the hero himself (an interesting spin on things); a South American drug baron and his bodyguards; an old flame who is somehow connected to the baron; a homosexual singer/performer and some allies to the upstanding hero, two of whom are 'Chappie' Chapman (Dutton) and Luis Valentin (Guzmán). Q & A works as a noir-come-internal affairs crime story because it combines things we're familiar with but injects them with, arguably, an auteur's own personal approach. Reilly as a hero seems venerable but smart given his history with the female character now connected with the drug baron and the script consistently pumps out quality one-liners, the majority of which are spouted by Brennan.Adding to the noir pointers, it rains a lot in the film but it's significant as to when it rains. Reilly's reunification in the car with his old flame happens after the baron has threatened him to stay away from her thus creating tension; he has done something he shouldn't have after someone of a superior rank has told him not to. But the meeting in the car, although very well placed given the inclusion of the rain, allows us to see deeper into the past of said couple's relationship. It turns out the flame mistook (or perhaps she didn't) a look Reilly gave her father upon seeing he was black, something that obviously points to bigotry. But then again, the film is racist without ever really demeaning any race, religion or ethnic group. Certainly, the level of racism in the dialogue is rather high but when one of Reilly's friend's is in the bar telling him how much of a 'great man' the chief of homicide is, the element of hate is built up through the script and our opinions of a character alternate without him even being on screen. It's also worth saying that when you have a film which contains a character both black and homosexual, one of which is also physically weak the majority of people will have a field day going up in arms over it; but I felt the film steered away from any sort of stereotyping and thus does its best to create a realistic character without any aim to offend. It's worth saying here that director Lumet directed 12 Angry Men, a film that was all about fighting for what's right whether black, Spanish-American or whatever.So Q & A is a courtroom drama set outside the court; a noir that it in colour and made in the 1990s; your not so average, everyday cop thriller from the 1980s-90s and your entertaining, compelling detective novel stretched across 130 minutes complete with colourful characters, hate, love, regret and humorous one-liners and insults. Brennon is perhaps the star but given the audience know exactly what he knows throughout several of the scenes, it's almost as if he's the star. Yes, he's mean and spiteful; yes, he intimidates and goes below the belt but if anything, I read people saying: 'watch it for Nolte'. Good call, he's almost the hero given what we know and Reilly doesn't but that's the apparent genius of Q & A: you have your detective cordon, your love cordon and your hard bodied bully cordon. I could recommend Q & A for a number of things, including a re-watch just to clarify a few things but do not let a complicated plot at all put you off seeing it.