Black & White (1999)

BLACK AND WHITE is a not-bad suspense thriller with a nice starring role for Gina Gershon, an actress I find extremely underrated in cinema. She gives an edgy performance as a dedicated cop who may or may not be performing some illegal extra-curricular duties as part of her job. Unfortunately the film is saddled with a dull and slightly pious main character but Gershon rules the roost and livens things up whenever she's around.The always interesting Ron Silver plays in support as a chess-playing cop superior. There's lots of sex and steamy content to give this a raunchy feel at times and the expected twist ending. As a film, BLACK AND WHITE passes the time well enough even if it isn't particularly great, which I put down to the low budget.

"Black & White" tells of a tough street-wise female cop (Gershon) and her rookie nice-guy partner (Cochrane) who become embroiled in an Internal Affairs investigation when the mounting evidence in a serial killer case begins to point to Gershon. With plotholes galore, this B-flick plays out like a dime novel on film as its make-it-up-as-you-go story serves up contrivance upon contrivance. Nonetheless, Gershon's character's psychodynamics are sufficiently intriguing to make this a suitable watch for the needy sofa spud into cop flix. (C-)

Devout Catholic O'Brien becomes a cop and is assigned to partner tough cop Hugosian. However when "the left-eye" serial killer turns out to be working out of the precinct O'Brien begins to suspect that Huggs may be even tougher on criminals that she appears.This is a bog-standard TV movie with a slightly starry cast (Gherson, Silver). The story is pretty poor, with plenty of red-herrings and clues scattering all over the place. However it so clearly is pushing you in one direction that it lacks tension or any sense of interest. Basically all the clues point to Huggs to the extent that you know it's either her or it's building up to a big twist at the end.The performances are not great. Cochrane as O'Brien is OK - he does ok with his fall from grace into the sin of his partner's life (right up until the final transformation implied by the final shot which is too much to believe). Gherson is good, but overplays her role too much. She has done the tough vamp plenty of times before better than this (Basic Instinct, Bound). Silver just does his usual creepy role and everyone else just moves round in the background.Overall the plot is boring with a really poor twist at the end - a straight forward plot that sticks a silly twist in to save it's main stars. The performances are mixed but generally only ok. There are better good cop/bad cop movies than this you know!

It's such a shame that Gina Gershon is so underrated. She is very talented, I noticed since I first saw her in movies where her role wasn't the primary one in the film. Her performance in "Black & White" is excellent. She should get more recognition, she is a very hard working actress. Has anyone seen her history of movies in the past decade? She participated in over 20 films in the 90's, I think that is something that should deserve credit.Rory Cochrane gives a good performance too, and so does Ron Silver and Alison Eastwood, but the best of the best in this movie was Gershon's acting. Only a few actresses could have done such a convincent job, the character looks very real, it was great.The movie itself has a nice script, I couldn't say it was bored or anything. It keeps the viewer interested on it all the time.There is a very sad thing about the movie, and is it Hugs's death. Gershon's character is really unique and people get to like her, and it's very sad to know that she dies, specially when she wasn't going to kill Chris. Or was she? I didn't understand that part very well, because Chris later said: "She went there to kill Michael Clemence, who was going to kill me". So, she wanted to protect Chris, not kill him, I assumed.It really made me sad, I didn't want Nora to die. The movie is worth watching and it gets from me a score of 7 out of 10. Maybe a 6 would have been better, but, I don't know, maybe just because Gershon is so hot, I'll give it a 7.