Jennifer Eight (1992)

Bruce Robinson's "Jennifer 8" isn't a great movie but worth seeing. While it does follow the detective-suspects-pattern-in-murders-and-has-to-protect-someone formula, Andy Garcia's and Uma Thurman's performances give the movie its strength. Obviously it's towards the end that the movie really gets going, but even up to that point there's some clever stuff. For the life of me I cannot figure out why any person would define as masterpieces the creepy "Home Alone", the obnoxious "Everyone Says I Love You", the vacuous "Eyes Wide Shut" and the pointless "Man on the Moon" when "Jennifer 8" actually has an interesting plot. Not the best movie ever made, but still one that I recommend. Good performances also come from Lance Henriksen, Kathy Baker and John Malkovich.

I knew once I had started watching this that I had seen it before - a long time ago as a teenager watching a late night movie. I enjoyed it then and I enjoyed watching it now again. Some of the performances are brilliant. John Malkovich gives a mesmerising turn as the prosecuting detective. Andy Garcia is convincing overall and Uma Thurman was very believable in a part that's hard to play. Lance Henriksen and Graham Beckel are great and tend to be those guys you've seen in lots of movies but can't quite place. Overall it is engaging and builds up to a thrilling pace. Unfortunately it does go over the top as too many twists and turns take us to a very abrupt ending. I couldn't help but expect more from it. The plot is terrifying - a serial killer of blind women. It started right. It just took off at some stage into the realms of the wildly unbelievable. I think that the plot and the cast probably deserved more. If it was more measured, brooding and clean in it's execution it could have been a great. This isn't to say that it's not a good movie. It is and it's worth a watch if you like your thrillers.

I would not have seen this movie, if i hadn't seen some of the reviewers calling it an 'Under-rated gem'. This movie claims to be of the Crime/Drama/Mystery genre. Here are some of my thoughts on the movie. John Berlin(Garcia)discovers a derelict's body in a landfill site who is suspected "to have offed himself with a knife". He also finds a brassiere & a hand. I was surprised that Berlin was going after the hand & the brassiere instead of the derelict who was in one piece. Garcia ends up falling in love(quite unsurprisingly!!) with the blind, Helena (Uma Thurman, as great as usual). And obviously the serial killer is after Helena, and Berlin is hell bound on protecting her. That takes care of the drama. As for the mystery, if you follow the movie close enough you get a good idea who the killer is, 24 minutes into the movie. And you know who it is for sure, another 20 minutes later. An hour later, the movie just abruptly ended. It seemed so rushed (i mean come on, i had to wait another hour, to know why the serial killer, kills and to know how he will be caught) and i found myself saying *beep*, who killed the *beep* derelict ?? So watch this movie for the good acting. Garcia, Thurman,Henriksen & Malkovitch put up a great show. It was a treat to watch St.Anne, interrogate, Berlin.

In "Jennifer 8" Andy Garcia plays an L.A. detective who goes to a small town to find a women's killer who seemed to return after two years without making new victims. This new investigation will lead to more conclusive clues on discovering that this murderer always female targets who happen to be blind and the only one who can help the police is an blind teacher (Uma Thurman) that might be the next victim.Moving with great thrills and some twists and turns, the film is incredibly good in its drama, in its effective suspense, only losing some credibility towards its conclusion of unbelievable situations and some deranged slowness when it comes to show the questioning of Garcia's character as the main suspect of his partner's murder while solving the case. However, the main problem was that writer and director Bruce Robinson seemed more concerned about making a great opening and a great middle but stumbled with some annoying mistakes towards the conclusive moments that might ruin the experience for the viewer. Example: when the detective is considered suspect of the crimes, he's interrogated, arrested for a brief period, the his bosses decide to release him so he can prove his innocence (?). Then, he's arrested again, after a strange sequence of cuts that don't make any sense after he meets the killer that smacks him down, and all of sudden comes the news that the detective was the criminal, case closed. And on a strange whirlwind of events, he gets the chance of being released (again!) on bail (? #2). It's really unbelievable."Jennifer 8" manages to do some good on us viewers thanks to the great cast involved that besides Garcia and Thurman also has John Malkovich, Kathy Baker, Lance Henriksen (very good here), Graham Beckel, Lenny Van Dohlen, Bob Gunton and Kevin Conway. As for the plot, it was quite a news when of its release, now it's so overdone in films like "Blink" (1994) that it might not impress most audiences. The great thing, really, is to know the killer commits such crimes and not really knowing who he is (if you look carefully you'll get who's the person right away after the first clue given by the teacher). Lots of thrills await you on the horizon even though it's quite a forgettable film and just like its title it gets an 8 with me. 8/10