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The third version of Ted Lewis's bleak crime novel Jack's Return Home, this story of a bad man who finds himself up against even worse men while investigating his brother Richie's death (ostensibly in a drunk-driving accident) has been transformed into a formulaic story of redemption. The minute Las Vegas leg-breaker Jack Carter (Sylvester Stallone) learns of Richie's demise, he high-tails it to Seattle for the funeral, even though his boss orders him to stay and Jack hadn't so much as spoke to his younger brother in five years. Jack gets a predictably frosty reception from Richie's widow, Gloria (Miranda Richardson), and teenage daughter, Doreen (Rachael Leigh Cook), but that doesn't stop him from interrogating guests at the wake and trying to get someone to admit that Richie might have been murdered. Richie managed a club for aging tough guy Cliff Brumby (Michael Caine, who played the role of Carter in the 1971 version of the film; it was remade in 1972 as HIT MAN), so Jack starts asking questions there as well. Among the shady characters he uncovers are Richie's mistress Geraldine (Rhona Mitra), sleazy bartender Eddie (Johnny Strong), internet pornographer Cyrus Paice (Mickey Rourke, who sounds as though his entire performance was looped by someone else) and weasely computer millionaire Jeremy Kinnear (Alan Cumming). Shot in shades of steely gray and streaked with near-constant rain, this gloomy revenge thriller is a sadistic cartoon (the pointlessly nasty PAYBACK comes to mind) whose phony moral soft center — Jack helps his niece regain her self esteem by telling her she's special — really is the last straw. Director Stephen Kay is fond of tricky camera angles, fancy opticals, scratchy fast-forwards and -backs, and stuttering editing, which might be interesting if they seemed in any way related to the story or the characters' states of mind.