A Time to Die Reviews

A TIME TO DIE has lofty aspirations, but hobbles itself with glaring plot omissions. The film has more voltage as a character study than a crime story, and it is largely through Traci Lords's assured performance that it flickers in the fog. Jackie Swanson (Lords) is a professional photographer, divorcee and mother who was unjustly convicted for cocaine possession and subsequently denied custody of Kevin (Jesse Thomas), her young son. Granted an early parole, she is required to perform 400 hours of community service with the LAPD, who have assigned her the task of shooting pictures favorable to their image. On impulse, Jackie tails Lieutenant Eddie Martin (Robert Miano), the cop who framed her, and takes photos as he executes a pimp. This explicit evidence is the stuff of major scandal, but Jackie's camera betrays her presence, and she flees in full view of Martin, who traces her license number. While speeding away, she causes a car wreck, and possibly an innocent motorist's fiery death. Police officer Frank (Jeff Conaway) meets Jackie during a rooftop shootout with two gun dealers. She stops the surviving goon with a proven technique; Frank asks her to coffee. He woos Jackie, and her own thoughts are clear when she develops photos of Frank before those of the execution she's witnessed. Soon, after a wry episode on Frank's beat, they share a casual lunch and Jackie's first lesson on a police pistol range, where she learns to shoot. This sexual metaphor, simple and effective, segues to the love scene, which is neither. Jackie cuts their evening short; as a cop, Frank is part of the system that has taken her son away. He's miffed, but undissuaded. The following day, he presses her to meet him for an after-hours drink, and she agrees. Waiting for Frank at a bar that evening, Jackie spots Eddie, a chum of Frank's, pocketing an envelope from an Asian prostitute; he's all over her and then they leave together. Jackie follows Eddie's car, shutter snapping. The woman enters a hooker hotel as bait and lures her angry pimp into an alley. In a set up, Eddie kills him, and it's all captured by Jackie on film sure to generate a storm of bad press for the LAPD. Jackie, however, does not bring her accumulating evidence to the police. Captain Ralph Phipps (Richard Roundtree) has placed strict limits on her photography, and is also Eddie's friend. Nor does she tell Frank. Then a look-alike friend is murdered at Jackie's apartment by coke-snorting Martin, who's been lying in wait for her return. As the first officer on the scene, Martin is assigned the investigation of his own crime. This is the pas de deux: he wants the negatives; she demands he recant his testimony which sold the jury on her drug possession when they both know she was set up. If anything happens to her, the incriminating pictures hit the papers. We suspect that Eddie will go after Jackie's son, and a phone call between sweet Kevin and his anguished mom is the high point of the film. We learn she has left the negatives with ex-husband Sam (Bradford Bancroft) and girlfriend Sheila (Nitchie Barrett), so it all seems inevitable. Frank, however, is also up to no good. A TIME TO DIE's climax is meant to be tense and cathartic, but it doesn't have the logic of a well-structured plot--some points are barely inferred, others unexplained--and its several ironies have scant effect. Despite Ms. Lords's worthy acting, and the minor boosts conferred by sound design, editing and a few visual graces, A TIME TO DIE, directed by Charles Kanganis (DEADLY BREED, CHANCE) from his own screenplay, devolves into pulp TV fare. (Violence, profanity, adult situations.)