Chasing Ghosts (2005)

If you like neo-noir and Michael Madsen, then this will be entertaining.First, it has a great cast supporting Madsen: Shannyn Sossamon, Gary Busey, Michael Rooker, and the always interesting Danny Trejo.Sossamon did a really good job in this low budget indie. Madsen was great as a dirty cop that is handling one last case that may reveal his secrets. Corey Large is a mysterious cop brought in allegedly from Miami to help.There is a big twist at the end a la The Usual Suspects.Outstanding cinematography.

When I first saw Shannyn Sossamon in 'The Holiday', I wanted to see what else she had done. Well, she was great in this otherwise forgettable effort.Perhaps it is just me, but after two viewings I have little idea of what was going on. We have this dirty cop about to retire and held over to finish out a baffling murder case. For unexplained reasons, he drives around in a 1969 Ford Galaxie convertible with a police radio. He is not undercover, so why does he drive his personal car? I suppose he was watching too many episodes of 'Miami Vice' and 'Nash Bridges' where the TV heroes drove their own convertibles.Then we have the trainee partner transferring in from undercover work in Miami. Somehow, he is immediately familiar with New York City and the local criminal hierarchy. His understanding of police procedure and office politics is strangely uneven. His personnel dossier is strangely incomplete, but little interest is aroused by these discrepancies. The police chief probably was thinking about having meatloaf for lunch.The plot has the dirty cop turning in his badge and sending a confession of his crime to the daughter of the undercover cop he murdered to save himself from exposure and death. Why our man is suddenly developing a conscience is never addressed.After more murders and an attempt to question an informant who suddenly and inexplicably turned homicidal toward his police handlers, we are allowed to find out that the real transferee cop from Miami has been held captive and a ringer is about to use his position to assassinate a crime lord in his prison cell.After killing his real target, the phony cop has no difficulty escaping from prison guards and a police dragnet and boarding a private jet to fly to freedom.The final photographs that would incriminate the dirty cop never reach the police and he presumably retires to enjoy his pension. The ending of this film is just as incoherent as the plot. It would not have strained the film budget much to provide a better script that would allow the audience to know what is supposed to be going on.

Movie was quite boring, didn't bring much to the screen...It is EXACTLY like a 2 HOUR version of one of the boring CSI episodes. Just drawn-out over 2 hours!. Now don't get me wrong, I LIKE CSI, but some of the episodes are just too slow to bare!I would not recommend this movie, and it is mostly boring-police dialogue. If you are looking for an ACTION movie, you have chosen the wrong movie, this movie is more like a detective-drama.If you are looking for a movie that resembles SAW, SEVEN, or Silence of the Lambs, this is not the movie to see. Unlike those three movies, Chasing Ghosts has a bad plot, reasonably bad cast (Madsen was fine as his usual self!), and watered-down action (when there was any action!).MOVIE : 3/10 - Didn't like the movie.

I'm sure we have all seen long movies we have enjoyed, but this one appears to be a 30 minute movie with 80 minutes of filling, it just has long pointless scenes, that add nothing to nor the movie or the characters, they are just there and you have to watch them. It even has characters that add nothing what so ever to the plot, they just appear do their stuff, say their lines and yes, you have to watch it.I must admit after watching the first 100 minutes, the movie has an interesting twist, probably thats why i didn't give it a 1, but even the most twisted of twists could not save 100 minutes of nothing.It has some pieces of action but for some strange reason the director might have thought you could get excited and he nicely inserted them in the form of flashbacks he could interrupt every 30 seconds and fit in a few minutes of reaction shots.To finish this off i promise i was trying hard to think something nice to say about the movie but it happens to be so long and so slow, that when you get to an action scene or to an important part of the story you are so bored from what happened before that they go unappreciated.