Dead End Reviews

Despite the sleazy milieu, the cast of this cop thriller attempts an air of gravity as the characters unravel a tale containing dark hints of matricide and molestation. In Scranton, Pennsylvania, policeman Henry Smovinsky (Eric Roberts) gets the news that his ex-wife Kate (Jayne Heitmeyer) has died from a fall off her Philadelphia balcony. Bachelor Henry must bond with son Adam (Jacob Tierney), a hostile, black-clad, nose-pierced teenager whom Henry hasn't seen formally in years. Things get even worse when Philadelphia police detective Maggie Furness (Eliza Roberts) shows up. Her investigation points toward Adam as the prime suspect in Kate's plunge. The boy flees his father's custody. Meanwhile, a witness puts Henry himself at the crime scene. He admits to Maggie that he spontaneously checked in on Kate and Adam days prior to the tragedy, but the ex-husband claims ignorance of Kate's profession as a high-class prostitute well-connected with local authorities. But Adam knew, and when Hank catches up with his fugitive son, the boy reveals that he felt he had driven his mother to suicide, by berating her in front of an unknown john. Now Henry is able to put all the pieces together: the killer was a policeman client, and Adam is to take the rap for the cop. Henry's false story that Adam clearly saw the assailant succeeds in flushing out the guilty party. It's Dennis (Frank Schorpion), one of Henry's best friends from the Scranton force, who accidentally threw Kate to her doom in a fit of passion. Dennis plays cat-and-mouse with an unarmed Henry and Adam atop Kate's high-rise, until father, son, and Maggie eliminate the villain in spectacular fashion. Spectacular it is, too. Like something out of a TERMINATOR movie, party-guy Frank gets electrocuted, shot, and splashed on the distant pavement--all at once. By contrast the base drama of DEAD END is strong, with a solid paternal turn from the extremely variable Eric Roberts (STAR 80, BEST OF THE BEST), who's well-matched against newcomer Tierney. The juvenile lead is neither too hard nor too sympathetic as the unprepared cop's ornery offspring, who may or may not be guilty of slaying his own mother, and Tierney keeps up that thespian balancing act until serving as a hapless quarry in the disappointingly routine action finale. Too much of DEAD END seems to take place in a B-movie atmosphere all too familiar to viewers of straight-to-video noir; glamorous strip clubs, friendly and attractive hookers, and lady police detectives who look like they just walked in off the fashion-model runway (actress Eliza Roberts is Eric's real-life wife). When a genuinely queasy moment comes along in Karl Schiffman's script (like runaway Adam's near-seduction by a middle-aged chickenhawk), it's truly jarring, but more so for how ineffective the rest of the movie is. On the whodunit level, the movie overplays a red herring in the form of a nasty Philly lawman (Jack Langedijk), then reveals the true culprit as an absurdly peripheral character from very early on. (Adult situations, violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity, substance abuse.)