Playmaker Reviews

The story of an ambitious actress caught up in a murder, PLAYMAKER veers from eccentric psychodrama to ludicrously implausible mystery. When marginal actress Jamie Harris (Jennifer Rubin) hears about a hot new movie called "Playmaker," she has her sleazy agent get her a reading. Her bartender pal, Eddie (John Getz), tells her about Ross Talbert (Colin Firth), an acting coach with a star-maker reputation. Desperate for success, Jamie pays Ross $5000 and starts her lessons, which have more to do with mind-games and abuse than acting. After two days of degrading exercises, she finds Ross's grade book, which contains photos of his students, some of whom have been murdered. Each shot of a dead student is marked with an "F." The next day, Jamie sees that an "F" has been marked on her page. As Ross approaches her with a knife, she grabs a gun from his desk and kills him. Jamie calls the cops. When she leads them to the corpse, they discover that the body has been switched. The police identify the victim as the real Ross Talbert, and, thanks to a videotape of the killing, rule that Jamie acted in self-defense. Meanwhile, Jamie wins the lead of "Playmaker." One day at her agent's office, she spots a picture of the phony Ross Talbert. She sets up a private audition with the impostor, Michael (also played by Firth), and tells Eddie of her plan. Jamie wears a disguise for her evening out with Michael, but he sees through it, and just as he's about to divulge who hired him to impersonate Ross, Eddie shows up and shoots him. Eddie explains to Jamie that he hated Ross, and that she was merely a pawn in his revenge plot. Jamie shoots him. Then, after "Playmaker" becomes a hit, she shoots her agent. While PLAYMAKER is fairly competently acted and produced, its screenplay evidences a contempt for the viewer's intelligence that is sometimes positively awe-inspiring. Why should Eddie construct such a needlessly byzantine scheme, involving so many people in the murder? Why is Jamie suddenly transformed into a hit woman? Who cares? Good questions, none of which are answered in this instantly forgettable thriller. Talented Colin Firth is relatively effective in his scenes of psychological manipulation, and it's sad to see him here. Perhaps he, too, should shoot his agent. (Violence, sexual situations.)