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Beautiful, moving film.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Brash and corrupt NYPD detective Mike Brennan (Nick Nolte) tracks down and executes petty criminal Tony Vasquez. Rookie ADA and former cop Al Reilly (Timothy Hutton) is picked by Kevin Quinn for the case. Detectives Luis Valentin (Luis Guzmán) and Sam Chapman (Charles S. Dutton) are the investigators. Brennan claims an open-and-shut self-defense case and Quinn expects a quick exoneration. There are various witnesses including criminal Bobby Tex Texador (Armand Assante) and his wife Nancy Bosch. Nancy is Al's ex who broke up after he didn't react well when introduced to her black father. The self-defense case doesn't add up and Quinn ramps up for a political run.Everybody is doing their best hard-boiled New Yorker. That and the labyrithium story can overwhelm the movie. Nolte is going for the full Nolte and it's arguably good. Armand Assante and Luis Guzmán doing a song and dance seems unnecessary. Jenny Lumet is possibly the squeaky wheel. Part of that is her character's convenient relationship with Al. I do like the idea but the situation is too convenient. The movie would improve with some simplification. Lumet is jamming so much into the movie that the flow becomes jagged. In addition, the music score is too light. The recurring song 'The Hit' is a bad 80's pop mix. Rubén Blades is infinitely better as an actor. It simply doesn't work for a gritty New York crime drama. Overall, the good stuff outweights the less good stuff. It kinda works for the most part.

Sidney Lumet does what he does best. Tell a story about law and order in New York and look into police corruption.Timothy Hutton plays Reilly, a young former cop turned assistant district attorney asked by the police commissioner (Patrick O'Neal) to look into the shooting of a Puerto Rican criminal by detective Brennan (Nick Nolte) who claims it was self defence. The commissioner tells him that its an open and shut case and also tells him that if its not in the Q&A then it did not happen.However Hutton is determined and finds flaws in Brennan's story and the case leads him to a charismatic Puerto Rican crime boss called Bobby Tex (Armand Assante) whose wife was once Hutton's girlfriend until he discovered she was mixed race.It looks like Brennan is an out of control cop who is trying to get rid of some select criminals on behalf of someone at the top. The commissioner turns out to be a hypocrite as he later tells Hutton that he is taking the Q&A too seriously.Nolte gives a larger than live performance as the foul mouthed, racist, homophobic, brutish cop who is a legend in the department. The first one through the door and is willing to break the law if necessary. His fellow cops know better to cross him and have to put up with his jibes. However he does not run away with the acting stakes as he is matched by Assante and Hutton.Assante gives a scene stealing performance as the drug dealer who just wants to get out of the business alive. He knows Brennan is dangerous and frankly he knows too much hence why he wants out. This was an era when Assante looked to have broken through and had a good run of films in the early 1990s.Timothy Hutton could had been a brat packer in the early 1980s. He was a contemporary of Tom Cruise, Sean Penn but separated from them early on for the simple reason by 1981 he was a best supporting actor Oscar winner. Since then Hutton decided to work with acclaimed directors or make interesting even offbeat films. The result is he might not be as well known today to cinema audiences but he has had a varied filmography.Here Hutton plays the earnest ADA who is out to cross swords with Brennan but he himself is flawed. His father was a cop and might had been on the take. His treatment of his former girlfriend suggests he might also be a racist himself.This is a moderately budget, moody, noir thriller. Ruben Blades matches the mood with his soundtrack. Director Sidney Lumet was in the twilight of his career and this was maybe his last great film. Of course he was probably jaded with the criminal justice system by then and you always sense the film has a cynical and depressed air about it. That the system is rotten to the core and cannot be fixed.Lumet gets his actors to pull out top performances and even some of the minor characters make their mark.

"Q&A" is ostensibly about an investigation into an incident during which a small time drug dealer was shot and killed outside a nightclub by a street cop. In fact though, the movie's about something far more profound as it portrays New York City and its justice system as being inherently racist on every level and also asserts that the type of justice dispensed is determined predominantly by the ethnicity (and corrupt interests) of the people involved on both sides of the line.Homicide Bureau Chief Kevin Quinn (Patrick O'Neal) appoints Assistant D.A. Al Reilly (Timothy Hutton) to head up an investigation into the shooting of a Puerto Rican by NYPD detective Lieutenant Mike Brennan (Nick Nolte). Quinn makes it clear that Reilly only needs to collect some witness statements and then present them to the Grand Jury because, in his opinion, the case is so straightforward that it doesn't merit any greater attention especially as he regards Brennan as an excellent cop who gets results. Things get complicated and dangerous, however, when Reilly and his fellow investigators start to unearth evidence of corruption and suspect that Brennan may not be blameless for what happened.Reilly is young, inexperienced and eager to do well in his career but nevertheless (despite the steer he was given by Quinn) feels duty bound to pursue his inquiries thoroughly to discover what actually happened on the night of the shooting. It's soon revealed that the drug dealer was working for a major operator called Bobby Trexador (Armand Assante) who has Mafia connections and Reilly is surprised to find that the girl who was the love of his life is now involved in a relationship with Texador.Reilly meets Nancy Bosch (Jenny Lumet) on her own and wants to get back with her but it emerges that they had separated after Nancy had seen the expression on Reilly's face when he discovered that her father was black and despite every explanation he'd given her since, Nancy had been haunted by the experience and couldn't consider a reconciliation under any circumstance.The investigation doesn't go in the way that Quinn had ordered but also ends unsatisfactorily from Reilly's point of view. The experience brings the young investigator into contact with a whole range of people from a variety of different ethnic groups and also culminates in him becoming considerably less naive than he was at the start of the process.Nick Nolte's portrayal of Brennan (who is corrupt, bigoted and extremely threatening) is incredibly powerful as he looks physically imposing and capable of extreme brutality. Brennan is coarse and very dangerous because he operates by his own rules and is especially adept at covering up his wrongdoings. In situations where his superiors become suspicious of his methods, they quickly decide not to take any action because in a city where the threat of crime getting out of control is always present, his methods at least provide good results.Patrick O'Neal is perfect as the autocratic, smooth and calculating Quinn who doesn't intend to let principles or regulations get in the way of his political ambitions and Assante is impressive as Trexador who's a very non-stereotypical crime boss. Timothy Hutton also does well in conveying the idealism and gullibility of a young man who like Quinn and Brennan is an Irish American."Q&A" is extremely thought provoking as it provides an uncompromising depiction of a situation in which any efforts to control crime and corruption (especially by orthodox methods) are inevitably hampered by the deleterious effects of rampant racism. This problem is portrayed as being intractable with no potential solutions being readily available.

Q & A is one of the most enigmatic films I've seen. It veers drastically between exceptionally good and oddly clunky and sometimes threatens to be pretty poor – and not necessarily in that order. It follows an investigation into a shooting by Michael Brennan, an experienced and ferociously tough police officer played magnificently by Nick Nolte in his pomp. The investigation is conducted by Timothy Hutton, who is a true revelation (to me, at least) as an almost equally tough, but mostly non-violent, lawyer. The situation is muddied by a shady drug-runner (Armand Assante) and a manipulative senior officer (Patrick O'Neal).The introduction to Nolte's character is fabulous scene-setting, as he holds court with fellow officers regarding some previous rough-housing of a suspect. The Brennan profile is deep and somewhat mysterious – we like him, we hate him, we are disgusted by him….and we want to see more of him. Speaking of which, the film could have benefited from more interplay between Nolte and Hutton. Hutton's brilliantly understated resilience to the aggression of Nolte and Assante, is a surprise and adds a true edginess to the film. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of the very clunky love interest Hutton has with Assante's mistress – we discover they are former lovers who split up over some fairly tenuous business about her father being black. The continued revisiting of this strained relationship is weak and uses time that one feels could be better served building the Brennan character or at least promoting the Nolte/Hutton feud.Other questionable points in the film concern the various plot turns that are almost casually thrown in and, whilst we don't lose track of proceedings, one feels we could have been given a better idea of how the characters arrive in certain situations. In short, by occasionally rushing things, Q & A often has you wondering if it's a bad film.But there are some moments that are truly great – various scenes with Nolte, and a short office tantrum by Hutton towards the end. You certainly feel that if this film featured more high profile actors it would be considered much more significant than it is currently. I would recommend Q & A to anyone simply for the performances of Nolte and Hutton – and obviously to fans of gritty cop dramas, who will love it anyway.