Roy Scheider stars as a retired secret agent mourning the murder of his wife, now busy dodging the bad guys who are out to kill him. Director Jonathan Demme is so character-oriented a storyteller that to see him attempting an Alfred Hitchcock-type suspense drama, with the accent on narrative and action, is almost predictably disastrous. Screenwriter David Shaber, adapting Murray Teigh Bloom's novel "The 13th Man", wants to stir up paranoia and intrigue, but either he or Demme dropped the ball after an OK start. For those who stick with it, there's a visually impressive climax at Niagara Falls, but Demme gets next-to-nothing out of his cast, and even less out of this tepid story. *1/2 from ****
Review of Last Embrace
