Diagonaldi Very well executed

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

bregund Oh yeah? You know, you might want to mention that little tidbit, I don't know, towards the beginning of the film instead of waiting for the very end. Suddenly Jeff Fahey's character is an earring designer, how convenient. And as a sketch artist, he is naturally granted complete access to the crime scene, even though he has no reason for being there. Oh, he's there to do a floor plan. Right. After forensics has been through taking thousands of photographs, suddenly the sketch artist is granted access to do a floor plan. Have they ever asked him to do a floor plan before? His car-sized partner is sent to arrest him, even though it's clearly a conflict of interest, and instead of arresting him he allows him to merrily skip around town stealing cars and looking for the extremely obvious killer, something that the incompetent detectives are somehow completely incapable of doing because they're, you know, stupid, while Jeff Fahey's character is qualified to solve the crime because he employs all of his skills as a sketch artist. Yes, it's all as dumb as it sounds, and even the payoff leaves one wanting; what is Sean Young's motivation for cheating, she could just as easily have walked out on her husband, there was no reason for her to stay with him.

Robert J. Maxwell Jeff Fahey is a sketch artist working the the LAPD. Drew Barrymore has witnessed someone entering the house of a murder victim and describes the woman's appearance. When Fahey finished his sketch, it looks like his wife, Sean Young. It not only LOOKS like her; it's a virtual PORTRAIT, with vibrant colors, a little beauty spot, and every hair of her wild do in place. This leaves Fahey disturbed.He doesn't confront his wife at first, but his suspicions gradually grow as he discovers for the first time that she was doing some kind of fashion work for the murder victim. It gets a little more intense when he discovers one of her ear rings at the crime scene.Young is very casual about it all. Yes, she was a client of the dead guy but so what? Her ear rings? She lost them somewhere, why? Drew Barrymore turns up a corpse in the LA River, which used to be a nice river before they covered it in concrete and cluttered it up with dead bodies. The LA River Revitalization Corporation is working to turn it from a concrete ditch into an urban oasis. That's fine, as long as they keep the corpses out. In my experience, they've shown themselves to be unresponsive to friendly overtures.In the course of the investigation, Fahey becomes a suspect himself and turns rogue. He spends the film unraveling the clues and the ending comes as rather a surprise.It seems long and plodding at times. The performances are professional but no more than that. The villain has a smooth voice and a face that, if it were a household appliance, would have to be an old-fashioned laundry washboard. The direction is pedestrian.But think of the tangled plot -- poorly executed though it may be. It's classic film noir. If it weren't in color, and if Victor Mature or Glenn Ford or somebody had been the lead, and it had been shot with striking shadows and kick lights, it would be a noir exemplar.

Wizard-8 "Sketch Artist" feels like just about everyone involved in making the movie - the actors, director, and writer - has the life sucked out of them before filming started. To begin with, take the title character, played by Jeff Fahey. There is no particular reason why we feel we should get involved in his plight. He is almost completely without emotion or passion, his appearance is sloppy, he makes some pretty dumb decisions, and his investigation of the mystery is done incredibly slowly, like he just doesn't care about what could happen to him. The director didn't seem to care about his character as well. There's no feeling of tension or panic anywhere in the movie, and the climax has the impact of a wet noodle hitting the ground.I will admit that Drew Barrymore, in a limited role, does give a surprisingly decent performance. And it's always fun to see bald-headed actor James Tolkan play another authority figure, though his role is limited as well. But neither actor is given enough to make the movie worth watching.

moonspinner55 Jeff Fahey has such alert eyes and a smudgy, insidious smile that every character he plays seems villainous; therefore, it doesn't really work to cast him as the good guy of the piece, the audience is just waiting for his character to crack and start blowing people away. Drew Barrymore, fresh off her acclaimed role as "Poison Ivy", must have done this film simply as a favor to director Phedon Papamichael (he was the cinematographer on "Ivy"); playing a character named Daisy Drew (!), she's bumped off right away, which leaves us with no one to look at but Jeff Fahey and Sean Young (who hasn't had a single subtle moment on camera since "Blade Runner"). This witless script, by Michael Angeli, concerns a police sketch artist who draws his own wife's face from a murder witness's testimony, and while that's not a bad idea for a plot, it would be much better suited to an hour-long TV series. This cable-made movie is short on inspiration (beginning with the casting) and shorter on surprises. * from ****