Devlin

Stars: Bryan Brown (FX, FX2, Cocktail, Breaker Morant), Roma Downey (A Woman Named Jackie), Lloyd Bridges (Hot Shots, Airplane, Joe vs. the Volcano). Based on a novel by Roderick Thorp, Devlin offers Aussie action man Bryan Brown as Frank Devlin, a tough New York City cop who becomes more involved than he cares for in the investigation of the murder of a mayoral candidate. As it turns out, Devlin is the dead man's ex brother-in-law, and has a bitter relationship with his ex father-in-law (Lloyd Bridges). As the plot thickens, Devlin increasingly ends up being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his employers begin to suspect he's gone bad. Devlin, of course, knows he's being set up. With the exception of a fair amount of gratuitous violence and language (under the basic rule of thumb "if you can't make it good, at least make it ugly"), Devlin is a routine action-mystery that goes off in a number of different directions until the deus ex machina ending in which more loose strings than you can shake a stick at are miraculously tied together. Unfortunately, the journey, led by the rugged good looks and monotone acting of Brown, just isn't very interesting. Audience: Die-hard action fans who are more interested in plasma than plausibility.