Good idea lost in the noise

Fantastic!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It will take but little time for a viewer to understand why this laboured venture at creating an action comedy was not seriously considered as a pilot film for a regular television series, despite the inclusion within the cast of three fairly popular TV actors in featured roles, due to the work's handicaps of a substandard screenplay, indifferent direction, and shoddy production values. The plot depicts three former Los Angeles Police Department Detectives, Cole Donovan (Gary Swanson), Elliott Taffle (Ted Wass), and Delia Langtree (Markie Post), prematurely retired as a result of millions of dollars gifted to each by an appreciative citizen as thanks for their solving of a crime committed with their wealthy benefactor as victim, but before long their gold-plated ease is found to bring scant excitement, and the trio have become private investigators, working as a team but also in competition among themselves. They accept only highly unusual cases, their fee a mere dollar, and for this movie the crime garnering their attention is a murder of a renowned artist, but since the slaying is shown to us early on, its solution becomes secondary to ancillary events involving the killer and, even more, the flamboyant lifestyles of the whilom police officers. It is here that the film fails to please, because there is no character development for the three, but rather cartoonish and poorly composed episodes, with Delia being an expert with card tricks, Cole displaying invincible street fighting skills, and Elliott apparently having no skills at all other buying expensive objects with his freshly granted fortune, while several redundant sequences are of the leads addressing the camera in what we might presume are meant to be droll interludes. However, there is no wit to be found here and, since the three featured performers have not a great deal of range in any case, their dialogue is as unattractive as are their poorly scripted parts, and although Director David Greene has contributed strongly when provided with engaging material, this shabbily organized piece offers a surfeit of embarrassingly bad scenes, the highly mannered styles of the main actors simply serving to highlight a poorly developed screenplay that soon dissipates any interest that a viewer might have originally held for it.

**Revising, after MANY more viewings. **A delightful pilot that could've led to a truly classic series.This is a charming story of three friends, who are also cops, and are left millions by a grateful victim in a kidnapping case. They retire and live the lives they've always dreamed of. But being a plain old millionaire can be boring for former police officers. So they come up with a way to stay in the game of fighting the bad guys; and it's one heck of a game. Officially they are private detectives, who take on the more bizarre and challenging murder cases, as long as they can find some distant relative of the victim who is willing to pay their standard fee...of a dollar.The catch is, they not only combat the baddies, but they also compete against each other to see who can solve the case first. And the stakes are high. For what each one will lose if they don't solve it first, the other two consult to take something particularly precious (Ted Wass' character almost ends up losing some priceless baseball cards).The chemistry between Wass, Post, and Swanson is fabulous. You really believe they are the best of friends. And as is often the case, the guys are just a touch in love with Post's character, and who wouldn't be. She's tough, fun and feminine; and who wouldn't adore a woman who's also a con artist and card shark. Swanson is perfect as the gruff tough old-school cop, and Wass is absolutely adorable as the more sensitive guy with a BIG yen for baseball.I really think this could've been a hilarious series, because the movie/pilot was brilliant (not perfect but so full of potential). If you ever have a chance to see this film, I'd recommend it. It's a fun romp, and the short monologues by the characters in between scenes are very funny.