My review was written in October 1992 after watching the movie at the Gramercy theater in Manhattan.
Unintentional laughs and goofy plot twists make "Traces of Red", a dramatic failure but an entertaining exercise in camp. In the currently hot erotic thriller genre, it should be a strong video title, but is miscast as far as the theatrical marketplace is concerned.
James Belushi brings his usual man of the people persona to a role that should have been a bit more uppercrust: a cop in Palm Beach, Florida, whose brother (William Russ) is running for Senate. Belushi is assigned to a murder case, and before long all of the principal characters (himself and brother included) are key suspects in the serial slayings of prostitutes and B girls.
With a nod to genre films like "Body Heat", "Traces of Red" initially holds one's interest in a whodunit mode. Unfortunately, scripter Jim Piddock threw out all concern for character consistency in his desire to keep the pot boiling, so the film becomes terminally silly.
Originally titled "Beyond Suspicion", pic includes so many traces of red herrings in its attempt to make every Palm Beach denizen as suspect, one fears that Ted Kennedy will eventually be dragged in as the killer. In particular, Lorraine Bracco, playing her femme fatale as a wannabe Melanie Griffith (right down to the voice), does many things for no reasons other than to make the audience wonder about her.
A skeleton in the family closet proves to be key to unravelling a mystery that includes one satisfying, though phony, twist at the very end. To throw film buffs off the track, Belushi narrates the film as a corpse, a successfully misleading homage to BIlly Wilder's "Sunset Blvd." format.
Belushi has the edge to create a film noir antihero but hardly the sex appeal to follow in Michael Dougas' or William Hurt's genre footsteps. As is sidekick and advisor, Tony Goldwyn suffer from the lack of script logic,
Tech credits are okay but on the cheap side, missing the shadow play and lighting stylization a true film noir requires.
