Trixie

By RICHARD CORLISS

If this retro crime comedy had been a Broadway play, it would have closed out of town. But movies last forever, so Emily Watson will have to explain to her grandkids what she was doing as a dim private eye who pretzels the language ("You killed somebody dead") but solves a Chandleresque mystery. Rudolph (Afterglow) is the perp of the year's most un-sit-throughable caper. Nick Nolte, Dermot Mulroney, Nathan Lane and Will Patton are the accomplices. And you, poor viewer, are the victim.

--By Richard Corliss