Q & A (1990)

A young district attorney seeking to prove a case against a corrupt police detective encounters a former lover and her new protector, a crime boss who refuses to help him in this gritty ... See full summary »

Director:

Sidney Lumet (as Alan Smithee: television prints)

Writers:

Edwin Torres (book), Sidney Lumet (screenplay)

Stars:

Nick Nolte, Timothy Hutton, Armand Assante

Nominated for 1 Golden Globe.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Nick Nolte	...	Mike Brennan
Timothy Hutton	...	Al Reilly
Armand Assante	...	Bobby Texador
Patrick O'Neal	...	Kevin Quinn
Lee Richardson	...	Leo Bloomenfeld
Luis Guzmán	...	Luis Valentin (as Luis Guzman)
Charles S. Dutton	...	Sam Chapman (as Charles Dutton)
Jenny Lumet	...	Nancy Bosch
Paul Calderon	...	Roger Montalvo
International Chrysis	...	Jose Malpica
Dominic Chianese	...	Larry Pesch (as Dominick Chianese)
Leonardo Cimino	...	Nick Petrone
Fyvush Finkel	...	Preston Pearlstein
Gustavo Brens	...	Alfonse Segal
Martin E. Brens	...	Armand Segal

Storyline

A young district attorney seeking to prove a case against a corrupt police detective encounters a former lover and her new protector, a crime boss who refuses to help him in this gritty crime film.

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Plot Keywords:

neo noir | police | district attorney | crime boss | detective | 

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Taglines:

When the questions are dangerous, the answers can be deadly.

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Thriller

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

USA UK

Language:

English Spanish

Release Date:

27 April 1990 (USA)

Also Known As:

Tödliche Fragen

Filming Locations:

New York, USA

Box Office

Gross USA:

$11,207,891

Company Credits

Production Co:

Regency International Pictures,Odyssey Distributors

Technical Specs

Runtime:

132 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Nick Nolte gained 50 pounds for his role as Brennan.

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Goofs

Chief Quinn asks ADA Reilly why he did not attend St. John's Law School. Hutton says his father didn't like the Jesuits. St. John's University is not a Jesuit institution. It is conducted by the Vincentians.

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Quotes

Leo Bloomenfeld: [telling Al Reilly about Kevin Quinn] He's a prick. He's a racist and an anti-Semite and a prick. He wants to be Tom Dewey, and he will be. He married for politics and all he can see is way clear to God knows how high up. Years ago, when we still had executions in the state, he used to volunteer as a witness. Yeah, his first murder case, uhh he was a young A.D.A. then and I'm talking years ago... The case was shaky, circumstantial and he wanted a recommended death penalty from the jury. Before ...

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Connections

Referenced in Community: Advanced Criminal Law (2009)

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Soundtracks

QUE SERA SERA (WHATEVER WILL BE, WILL BE)
Written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans
Jay Livingston Music/St. Angelo Music

User Reviews

This is one &!(## X&^@+**#-ing tough movie.

The last and least of Sidney Lumet's three stories of (more or less) innocents trying to uncover police corruption and blow the whistle on the guilty, and the only fictional story. There's nothing wrong with the acting of the principals. Nolte is brutish and tall in an over-the-top performance. (He always looks larger on screen than in person.) His New York accent, however, is clearly superimposed on an unregional Omaha set of phonemes. Jenny Lumet looks splendid but has the same problem with her accent, and her scenes are too long as part of a mixed-up romantic subplot that doesn't hold together well. Timothy Hutton has less of a notable problem with his speech, and he is really quite good as the innocent-looking but by no means weak investigating attorney. He even looks pretty Irish. O'Neal is the smoothly villainous and murderous head of the investigation, and a very good villain he is, as usual. Guzman and Dutton provide excellent supporting roles. And Armand Assante seems built for the part of the iron-eating PR drug dealer who has made the decision, a thoroughly rational one, to get out and live in the Caribbean sunshine. His body movements provide a language unto themselves, his smallest gestures are magnetic. They draw so much attention to themselves that they are almost the self-parody that they were in his hilarious spoof of detective movies. He's an exceptional actor.

The movie's plot, however, leaves a good deal to be desired. Its fictional skeleton shows through. You've never seen so much ethnicity on the screen before, and it's misplaced. It's easy enough to believe that racial insults are offhandedly traded among in-group members but difficult to believe that every conversational exchange, no matter how casual or intense, must include one. And at the very time when some of these barriers are beginning to weaken, judging from the rising rates of intermarriage. Serpico's story was relatively simple. Prince of the City far more complex and realistically tragic. This one is simply hard to follow as well as hard to believe. Boats turn into fireballs in unlikely ways, as they do in quickie action movies. Characters fly back and forth from San Juan to New York and some are killed and it's difficult to keep track of what's what and who's who. It isn't that Lumet has lost his touch.

When a character is shot in the neck, man does he bleed out. But the director is working with less compelling material here and in any case this kind of narrative is running out of steam. All of that notwithstanding, this is still a notch above most of the junk polluting the multiplex screens today.