Year:
1998
Studio:
Castle Rock Entertainment
Movie:
3/5
DVD:
3/5
Zero Effect is a
movie about the World's Greatest Detective, Darryl Zero (Bill Pullman),
working on perhaps his most challenging case. Zero is played
brilliantly by Pullman. He's paranoid, reclusive, gifted, and really
hard to work with. Nobody knows what Zero looks like, because he has a
front man, Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller), to do all the talking with clients.
Perhaps Zero's best skill is his ability to play roles and blend into
the background. He's a consummate actor and an excellent con man.
Actually that's probably not quite right. He doesn't come off as the
con man type -- smooth, suave, totally confident and friendly. Zero is
the businessman you meet at the club. More of a white-collar type of
con man.
In this case Zero is working for wealthy businessman Gregory Stark
(Ryan O'Neal). Stark lost the keys to his safe deposit box. Someone
found it. Someone who has been blackmailing him for the last year, at a
tune of $100k every couple of months. Stark needs that key found and
that person stopped.
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Of course
there is more to it than that. But Stark won't say. They
never say. But Zero always finds out. In this case it is murder and the
evidence of murder. But that's for later. Zero quickly discovers his
primary suspect, the lovely paramedic Gloria Sullivan (Kim Dickens). He
spots her making the next blackmail pickup.
But that
leaves more questions. What is Sullivan's role in all of this? Why is
she doing it? Why is she attracted to Zero's persona of Nick Carmine,
accountant? Most importantly, why is Zero attracted to Sullivan? That's
what the rest of the movie is about. This movie is about a very quirky
and very competent private investigator running up into a situation he
is ill equipped to handle.
The DVD has commentary by Jake Kasdan. About average though he does
have this contest thing where Kasdan mentions the words of a four-word
sentence throughout the commentary. Anybody who ever meets Kasdan and
mentions the sentence to him he'll donate $5 to whatever charity that
person designates. It's Kasdan's experiment to see if people actually
listen to the (at the time) Laserdisc commentary.
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