Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The White Chicken Mystery

    The other night I happened to come home very late. It was the middle of the night and I was driving up a steep mountain road. Near the top I saw something white in my headlights. It was standing in the other lane, standing very still. It was a large white chicken. It was probably a rooster because I thought I could see his comb as I whizzed by at my customary pace. He never moved a muscle. This is weird, don't you think?      After a couple of days to consider this phenomenon, I have come up with some plausible answers for his bizarre behavior. 1. He was conflicted whether or not he should cross the road. 2. He was feeling cocky and decided to play chicken with the traffic. 3.He was being hen-pecked at home and had decided to end it all. 4. Someone had egged him on to do it. 5. He had just watched the movie Fantastic Four and decided to try to stop a truck the way that Ben Grimm did on the bridge. 6. He had driven himself crazy wondering if ...

Batman Lives In Washington, DC

    Hey, everyone. I just read an interesting article on Washington Post.Com by Mike Rosenwald. It was titled Who Is the Route 29 Batman? This is a true story about a guy that the cops pulled over. The guy was driving a black Lamborghini with Batman plates. There were yellow Batman symbols on the doors. They had a video from the police car that showed him being pulled over. He was wearing a Bat-suit which he said cost him $5000. His gig is that he visits sick children in area hospitals and hands out Bat-Toys and Bat-books to cheer the kids up.     His name is Lenny B. Robinson and he says that the 'B' stands for Batman. He is perfectly sane and is just a good dude trying to make a difference. He is a self-made millionaire and is currently having a duplicate of the Batmobile custom-made at a cost of $250,000.    It was a hoot, watching the cops having their pictures made with the Bat Guy. Someone asked him where Robin was and he said that the boy won...

Cake Is Better Than Swords

Hey, everyone. On Thanksgiving, we had a get-together here at The Author's Green Retreat. One lady brought a cake which I wanted to show you. It had the look of a Roman Coliseum about it. Inside it was just as decadent...and fun, as ancient Rome. When I cut it open, homemade marshmallow cream began to ooze out in several spots, running over the chocolate cake and peanut butter icing. It is best served warm so the cream is fluid. Very tasty. The same lady, and her children, are people who have played a lot of Skyrim. They gave me some pointers on the game because I am having problems with it. They taught me how to fast travel, and a ton of other things, but the main thing was the armor and clothing problem. This is a little embarrassing, but let me explain. Okay. For several weeks when I played, I would enter towns and everyone I met would comment on my nakedness. I would select a tunic and shoes, whatever, go back around people and they would say something about it. I guess I w...