Ed McBain's 87th
Precinct - Lightning
Director: Bruce Paltrow
Year: 1995
Rating: 5.5
The first of three TV movies based on the books
of Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter). Randy Quaid plays Steve Carella with the
rest of the usual characters on hand - Artie Brown (Ving Rhames), Meyer Meyer
(Ron Perkins), Bert King (Alex McArthur) and Ollie Weeks (Alan Blumenfeld).
Quaid is surprisingly good as Carella and everyone else is fine. If you are
a fan of the books - and who isn't that has read them - the film feels authentic
to the comradery between them, the manner in which the killer is tracked
down and their lack of amenities office. They do nothing to try and splash
it up. Which is the way it should be. No crazy stuff like the earlier Fuzz
with Burt Reynolds. Just keep digging and something will pop up.
A serial killer (Steven Flynn) is
targeting female college track stars. He cons them into thinking he is a
sports journalist, gets them alone and breaks their neck. He leaves a small
American flag in their hand and the word lightning scrawled on their body.
The first body is discovered by Teddy (Deanne Bray) a deaf woman. In
the books her loving relationship with Carella is the heart of many of the
stories. Since Lightning came along fairly late in the series, they took
their meeting from a much earlier book. McBain had initially killed off Carella
in the first or second novel - I forget which - his publisher talked him
out of it for which McBain says he was eternally grateful. A creepy serial
killer, beautiful victims and relentless cops. That makes a solid serial
killer film. The next two 87th Precinct films - Ice (1996) and Heatwave
(1997) - had mainly different actors.
