Misconduct

Why would a neo-noir legal thriller starring Anthony Hopkins and Al Pacino go directly to video? Because it's inexcusably awful! Set in New Orleans, Misconduct's plot revolves around Ben Cahill (Josh Duhamel), an ambitious young lawyer working on a class-action suit involving Arthur Denning (Hopkins), a smugly corrupt Big Pharma kingpin. Ben's wife Charlotte (Alice Eve) is a registered nurse who has become a workaholic to cloak her depression following a recent miscarriage. Suddenly, Ben's seductive ex-girlfriend Emily (Malin Akerman) contacts him, saying she has incriminating files that will indict Denning, who also just happens to be her current lover. But when ethically-challenged Ben takes the evidence to his firm's senior partner, Charles Abrams (Al Pacino), Emily is mysteriously kidnapped. There's also Denning's forthright security specialist (Julia Stiles) and a terminally ill South Korean hit-man (Byung-hun Lee), careening around on a motorbike. Unfortunately, director Shintaro Shimosawa's film is mostly incoherent, discarding any logical progression or reasonable sense of pacing in favor of curious camera angles. While Duhamel does his best with the story's misbegotten, melodramatic absurdity, it's obvious that both Hopkins and Pacino simply cashed their paychecks and moved on. Not recommended. (S. Granger)