The Limbic Region
What happens when several decades of moldy serial-killer clichés are artlessly juxtaposed with an equal number of rancid hard-boiled-cop clichés? If you really want to find out, watch The Limbic Region, a thriller so ridiculously overwrought it would qualify as a parody if it weren't so suffocatingly humorless and somber. Director/social activist/bad-movie staple Edward James Olmos stars as a tough cop who's so obsessed with catching a brilliant serial killer that, as the film begins, he has alienated his wife and child, and hit the bottle with a vengeance. Tubby veteran character actor George Dzundza plays the aforementioned mother-lovin' serial killer, a man so obviously guilty that he does everything but walk around with signs bearing enlarged photos of himself killing his victims to signify his guilt. But headquarters thinks Olmos is a dangerous hothead chasing the wrong guy. Taken off the case, he throws down his badge in disgust and spends the rest of the film harassing Dzundza on a full-time basis. Needless to say, bloodshed ensues. Neither Olmos nor Dzundza embarrasses himself, but neither can do much with the flimsy material he's given. Murky, melodramatic and relentlessly dull, The Limbic Region is an unforgivably pretentious little slasher film that should be of interest to Dzundza cultists only.