MULHOLLAND FALLS (46)

Directed by: Lee Tamahori

Starring: Nick Nolte, Melanie Griffith, Chazz Palminteri, John Malkovich

The Pitch: Cops unravel a cover-up in 1950s L.A.

Theo Sez: Seen, unfortunately, more than a year after its release - and, inevitably, after the intervening brilliance of L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, which hangs over the whole enterprise like the ghost of Potential Wasted. Hard to say how it would've fared before the bar was raised : it's handsome to look at, Haskell Wexler giving it his best milky haze, and the first half at least could almost be a companion-piece to this director's ONCE WERE WARRIORS in its clear-eyed but compassionate take on machismo, violent men lashing out to salve their wounded pride. Even here, however, there are hints of the second-hand - the cops sketchily drawn (sometimes no more than comic relief), the plotting undistinguished and studded with cliches (villain to hero : "We're not so different, you and I") - an impression confirmed by the final act, which brings in nuclear testing and radiation victims and is, quite simply, a mess. That it also contains the film's most interesting element - a nuanced portrait of a wife shattered by the revelation of her husband's infidelity - is a moot point when said wife is played by the inescapably flighty Griffith, denoting heartbreak by gazing sadly, wide-eyed, like a little girl who's lost her puppy ; like the film itself, she does nothing wrong but is just too limited to amount to anything very memorable. A featherweight, if intermittently impressive.