Directed by: Bruce Robinson
Starring: Andy Garcia, Uma Thurman, Lance Henriksen, Kathy Baker, Graham Beckel, John Malkovich, Kevin Conway
The word "serviceable" keeps popping up in my mind as I think of Jennifer 8. The plot, performances, and the movie itself follow in lockstep with what we would expect from movies of this genre, but it never rises to greatness or even very-goodness. This is quite a cast in a serial-killer suspense picture which doesn't quite match their efforts. There is also a love story we could do without which doesn't surprise us in the least. When you have two attractive leads, why not just have them fall in love?
Detective John Berlin (Garcia) is a former LA cop recovering from a bad marriage who moves to a small town to join his brother-in-law Fred Ross (Henriksen) on the town's force. Berlin soon encounters a cold-case file of a murdered girl and digs through a landfill to find body parts including a severed hand with worn down fingers. Berlin deduces the victim was blind (the fingers were used to read Braille) and soon Berlin is on the trail of a serial killer. Other victims' cold cases are discovered and Berlin and Ross visit an institute for the blind where he interviews Helena, the roommate of one of the victims. Berlin is Instantly Attracted to the fragile and frightened Helena. He falls for her, which is not something a detective should do with a witness who is part of a criminal investigation.
Berlin's and Helena's romance is by rote and almost feels thrown in because that's what happens in movies like this. Helena is doubtlessly the next intended victim unless Berlin can stop the killer. During a late night stakeout of the institute, Berlin and Fred have a run-in with the killer resulting in Fred being killed and Berlin being questioned by the hard-ass agent St. Anne (Malkovich) and accused of murdering Fred. We are never told whether St. Anne is FBI, Internal Affairs, or from some other agency. The scene between Malkovich and Garcia is well done with enough tension to make us wonder why there isn't more where that came from.
The resolution of all this is a scene of cheap trickery which doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. What we're led to believe is one woman would deliberately put herself in harm's way to set the killer up to be ambushed. What if he caught up to her before the ambush could take place? It's a lot to ask of someone.
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