D.O.A. (1988)

When one of his students (Robert Knepper) commits suicide by jumping off a school building, his professor (Dennis Quaid) soon finds himself involved in a sordid tale of adultery, incest and murder ... including his own. But before he dies, he's determined to find out why he was a marked man. A loose remake of the 1950 noir classic D.O.A., the film holds on to the main premise, that of a man attempting to track down his own murderer but the narrative itself is substantially altered ... and not for the better. The film is branded an 80s film by several things including its rockish underscore by Chaz Jankel and trendy camera tricks courtesy of Yuri Neyman. As the protagonist, Quaid (in his mid 30s) is simply too young to play a burnt out writer clinging to his past glory. As the spunky heroine, Meg Ryan is cute as a button but hardly the femme fatale of film noir. The director(s) Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton add a Hitchcockian touch of the accused but innocent man bound to the protesting heroine (NORTH BY NORTHWEST, THE 39 STEPS) but all it does is slow the film's stride and distracting us from the main plot line. It's slick, I'll give it that. With Daniel Stern, Jane Kaczmarek and Charlotte Rampling.