LAST DANCE (22)

Directed by: Bruce Beresford

Starring: Rob Morrow, Sharon Stone

The Pitch: A young lawyer battles to reprieve a Death Row inmate due to be executed for murder.

Theo Sez: It's amazing how even bad Hollywood can be so fluid, so watchable - but this is definitely bad Hollywood, mixed-up and generally unsuccessful. It seems to have been doomed at script stage, by the decision to make of this DEAD MAN WALKING-type plot an investigative thriller, complete with nick-of-time climax, even though (as DEAD MAN WALKING realised) the interesting thing is less the battle to avoid the death penalty than the need to face it, the prisoner coming to terms with his (or her) crime and its terrible consequences, and/or finding some redemption in at least dying "a good death". It might still have been reasonably gripping as a straight investigation (though Morrow, as in QUIZ SHOW, makes a colourless truth-seeker), but only if the role of the prisoner herself had been marginalised. Instead, inevitably, star dynamics take over and the film gets torn in two, with underdeveloped Death Row scenes and a nagging feeling that most of the time we're watching the wrong story (the confusion culminating in the totally bungled "double" ending). The only consolation, however dubious, is that the film doesn't look like it would've amounted to much even if it had actually concentrated on the plight of its convicted killer - whose near-saintliness, more than anything else, marks this out as a vanity production.