Cinema surveillance images are loading at the bottom of the page

Brown's Requiem

Threat advisory: Low - Low risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

Everyone knows Fritz Brown has a past. Someone wants to make sure he doesn't have a future.

Fritz Brown (Michael Rooker) is an ex-LAPD, recovering alcoholic who now splits his time repossessing cars for a used car lot and staffing his one-man private detective agency. When a filthy caddie named Freddy "Fat Dog" Baker (Will Sasso) wanders into Fritz' office one day, flashing a wad of cash, Fritz is hired to follow Fat Dog's kid sister, Jane (Selma Blair), who is holed up with a Beverly Hills sugar daddy named Sol Kupferman (Harold Gould).

Kupferman is a 70-year-old bag man for the mob, and Fat Dog claims that "Solly K" is up to something evil that may harm Jane. The trail leads Fritz to an encounter with his dark past in the person of Haywood Cathcart (Brion James), current head of LAPD internal affairs and the person who kicked Fritz off the police force. But what is Cathcart doing in business with a mobster? And why is Jane shacked up with a man old enough to be her grandfather?

Fritz starts asking some questions, and the answers are all bad news. Fritz finds himself back on Haywood Cathcart's short list and, as the bodies start to pile up around him, Fritz stands to lose more than his job this time around as some old debts get repaid.

Also starring Tobin Bell as Stan The Man, Jack Conley as Richard Ralston, Kevin Corrigan as Walter, Brad Dourif as Wilson Edwards, Barry Newman as Jack Skolnick, William Newman as Augie, Valerie Perrine as Marguerita Hansen and Jack Wallace as Bud Meyers. Written and directed by Jason Freeland, based on the novel by James Ellroy.

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Beige requiem.

If you liked the screen version of James' LA confidential you won't like this. There is none of the hard-edged animosity between characters, none of the tense expectation, none of the sex, none of the violence. What you get is the pulp detective voiceover with moving pictures of people walking around. Brown never has to work to get his information, he just walks up to some guy in a bar and asks. then gets told. There are never any stumbling blocks to his investigation, he knows everyone who gets mentioned and no one ever lies to him.

Just like in real life. Not.

If you want a more realistic private dick flick to watch go for LA confidential: It's better in every way.

Security censorship classification

Surveillance time

100 minutes (1:40 hours)

Not for public release in Australia before date

VHS rental: 8 March 2000