Powerful

Fresh and Exciting

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Watched this because a friend of mine is a huge Kristofferson fan and had never even heard of this one so I thought i'd give it a shot. Yeah, there's a good reason neither of us had heard of it before, as it is so very not worth watching. Everything about this movie you have seen before, most likely on TV in an episode of some crime show. The only thing even remotely interesting here is unfortunately seeing O.J. Simpson in a wheelchair. He gets one very brief scene where he gets to convey his feelings about being confined to a wheelchair after being a football star, (he literally shrugs off his grief immediately after his dramatic monologue by saying "hey its no big deal") and then he gets to save Drew Barrymore from two guys with guns who are trying to break into the safe house where he's guarding her. (he dispatches one guy with a mallet!) I'm making this sound a lot more entertaining than it is, its really dreary. Its not even so bad its fun, its just dull and plodding. Kristofferson has lost his wife and daughter in a car accident years before the present and he gets a flashback scene where he gets to act out his rage that may be the one effective scene he has in the film. The rest of the time he's just barely holding himself awake enough to get through his scenes. Its not good.

Hey, folks, here's a blast from the past..."No Place To Hide" By Richard Harrington Washington Post Staff Writer April 19, 1993"No Place to Hide" is so bad it's not even any good. No guilty pleasures are to be found in its preposterously clumsy plot, or in the limp performance of Kris Kristofferson (someone check his pulse). Even Drew Barrymore regresses from the promise of "Guncrazy" by being forced to play a petulant 14-year-old caught up in a web of murder and intrigue. For both actors, this film is a triumph of underachievement.Barrymore plays Tinsel Hanley, whose ballerina sister Pamela (the always alluring Lydie Denier) has just become a backstage corpse de ballet during her dance company's rehearsal ("Swan Lake" or "Swan Song"?). The case falls into the lap of Detective Joe Garvey (the laconic Kristofferson, whose acting range is measured between squinting eyes and a grinding jaw). Looking for clues, Garvey comes across Tinsel: a petulant, selfish brat, who's now a target for an unknown attacker (who looks and acts suspiciously like The Shadow).Garvey is still suffering from the loss of his wife and daughter, several years earlier, to a drunk driver; the daughter, if still alive, would be about Tinsel's age. Do we detect a budding emotional subtext? Indeed, Garvey and Tinsel (both furiously resisting attachment) gradually develop a bond excruciatingly detailed in Tinsel's voiced-over diary entries. It's all very embarrassing, as is O.J. Simpson's wheelchair cameo (perhaps he was between takes on "The Naked Gun").Director Richard Danus, who beats his own script to a pulp, has no idea where to take any of this -- loose plot threads abound -- and the inevitable revelation of a secret society run by Dirty Harry elitists is simply ridiculous (if ever a film needed a satanic subplot, it's this one).In any number of confrontations, Kristofferson tells Barrymore to "Run, run!" and "Get out of here!" Take those as subliminal messages.

Disgruntled cop Kris Kristofferson (looking good sans beard and mustache) protects a sassy teenage girl (Drew Barrymore) from the killers who just did away with her sister, a professional ballerina who was killed during a performance. Barrymore's character (named "Tinsel"!) is tough to take, with lots of whiny outbursts and tantrums, but Kristofferson is decent and supporting players Martin Landau, Dey Young and O.J. Simpson are each very good. The slim production values render this a B-movie (maybe even a C-movie), but it isn't terrible. Richard Danus wrote and directed, and while the shabby-looking picture doesn't exactly showcase a hot, promising new talent, at least he gets the job done. ** from ****

A good cast cannot save this one from poor direction, poor production values and some of the stupidest background music ever. The story is predictable, the characters seem to be reading their lines, and the action is contrived. Having said all that, how bad can a movie be that features O.J. Simpson in a story about a slasher?