No Mercy (1986)

After his partner (Gary Basaraba) is brutally murdered, a Chicago cop (Richard Gere) goes to New Orleans to track down the man (Jeroen Krabbe) responsible for the killing. Directed by Richard Pearce (COUNTRY), this is the kind of overwritten bad movie that you can't help but get sucked into and enjoying it even though you know it's bad. And by bad, I don't mean "camp". The plot is ludicrous, the dialogue is poor, the characters are cliches, the acting is mostly lousy but you're hooked anyway. Richard Gere is still at his pretty boy stage here and his touch cop act is hard to buy. In the movies, Bogart and Mitchum would have eaten him alive and in real life, he'd get bitch slapped by the bad guys. But Krabbe makes for a chilling villain and Kim Basinger brings a genuine pathos to her role as Krabbe's unwilling mistress. It's a testament to her talent as an actress because it sure isn't in the writing. The fiery ending is never in doubt but it takes forever in coming. The cinematography by the French Canadian Michel Brault is full of local New Orleans color and the one note score is by Alan Silvestri. With William Atherton, Ray Sharkey, Terry Kinney and George Dzundza.