Sketch Artist

Stars: Jeff Fahey (The Lawnmower Man, Body Parts), Sean Young (Love Crimes, Once Upon a Crime, A Kiss Before Dying), Drew Barrymore (Poison Ivy, E.T., TV's "2000 Malibu Road"). When Daisy (Barrymore), a witness, describes a murder suspect to sketch artist Jack Whitfield (Fahey), he discovers something interesting from the resulting portrait: it's his wife. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game between Jack and his interior designer wife Rayanne (Young). When Jack visits Daisy for a second opinion she turns up dead the next day, and the police take another long hard look at their resident sketch artist. Jack backs out of the limelight, and begins his own investigation on the sly, determined to clear his name and find out if his wife's a killer. Fahey, currently amassing a string of video hits (The Lawnmower Man, Body Parts) has no grisly plot or dazzling special effects to back him up here, and he's less than compelling without them, while Young delivers her standard lethargic performance. What's left is a paper-thin plot which, to the filmmaker's credit, they do the best to string out, until the watch-me-pull-a-rabbit-out-of-my-hat cheap shot ending. A lush acoustic score by workhorse film composer Mark Isham is nice to listen to but out of place with the rather perfunctory filming. Audience: Thanks to Basic Instinct, the "erotic thriller" has been elevated to a respectable place on the video shelf. But those looking for skin and thrills will find only the former in Sketch Artist.