Legal Eagles

A hard-nosed assistant district attorney and an imaginitive defense attorney find themselves on the same side of the legal process to defend a spacy performance artist accused of art theft and murder.

Robert Redford, usually a pretty good judge of material, got snookered badly in this Ivan Reitman comedy that also starred Debra Winger and Daryl Hannah. Redford is a rising assistant D.A. who is prosecuting a woman (Hannah) for theft of a painting by her father. Before he knows what hit him, he's involved romantically both with the defendant and with her scattered lawyer (Winger). Redford is as good as he can be, given the circumstances, but this is a movie that doesn't know where it's going. Originally intended as a serious film about the legal wrangling over the estate of the late Mark Rothko, this film quickly degenerated when the script was turned over to Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr., whose sparkling oeuvre includes Turner and Hooch. --Marshall Fine