Q & A
Dir: Sidney Lumet
1990
***
The fact that Q&A is a Sidney Lumet film only opens it to more scrutiny than it probably really deserves. It's another corrupt NYC police movie among many. I've seen worse, I've seen better. Nick Nolte is however on fine form, larger than life and as terrifying as ever, our protagonist Timothy Hutton however, is a little less well written. It's never clear whether he is naive or just acting naive, I'm not sure this is intentional either. The other problem (Columbo fans may disagree) is that we already know the outcome at the end of the film, we know who did what and we know that they'd eventually find out. The conclusion however was a nice surprise and probably puts it in the above average category, however it is only a fleeting flash of how great Lumet could be.