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Movie Review: Zero Effect

    Hey, everyone. Yet another weekend is drawing to a close. I want to tell you guys about a movie I watched the other night. The title was Zero Effect and it was on the Encore Channel.
     Bill Pullman stars as Darrell Zero, a really strange Private Investigator. The guy cannot interact well/at all with others. He has a hired hand by the name of Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller) who interviews potential clients and does the work that Zero doesn't want to do. Zero is the best detective in the world, a Sherlock Holmes caliber sleuth that never fails.
     Zero's latest case involves a client who has lost his keys. Gregory Stark (Ryan O'neal) is very secretive as to why the loss of his keys is so important but it seems that someone is blackmailing him with the information which the keys have given that thief access to. Zero is intrigued, but first must find out the secrets of Mr. Stark, in order to discover what he is being blackmailed with and who is doing the blackmailing.
     Darrell Zero, the reclusive detective, goes to the Pacific Northwest to delve into Stark's affairs. Zero becomes involved with a pretty paramedic lady who he suspects is involved in the blackmail scheme. She has been used to recover a money drop that Stark has made. It complicates matters when he is attracted to the girl, Gloria Sullivan (Kim Dickens). Zero is clueless with women. In fact, you might say he has zero experience. Ha, ha. But Gloria walks him through a relationship.
     Zero discovers that Stark had been in love with a woman while he was in college, back at Yale. This was 20 years earlier. The dirty Stark arranged to have the woman killed because she would have been an embarrassment to his rich family. Zero still couldn't put the case together because of the way that the crime scene had looked from 20 years before. The woman had been killed in a seedy motel and the bed had been turned cockeyed for no apparent reason. That seemingly innocuous fact was the focal point of the mystery.
    Will the ruthless Stark kill his own Private Investigator? Will Zero's helper quit his boss to please his hot girlfriend? Is anyone stupid enough to not look under their couch cushions for the keys that have been lost for two years? You'll answer these questions and more if you watch this movie.
      This film was one of those movies I had not seen or heard of. It was very good and I'd give it a 4 star out of 5 rating. If you are hanging around the house this week, pop over to blockbuster or somewhere and check it out. It is okay.
    From the author's green retreat, I'm CE Wills.
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