The film carries a lot of backstory, because it's based on the second of James Lee Burke's novels about Robicheaux, so Baldwin turns up - with a white streak in his hair that looks as if a pigeon has pooped on his head - with more angst and past problems than the plot can deal with. Burke is a character driven crime writer with a knack for patois dialogue that is not terribly well-served by the need to make this a vehicle for Baldwin's action man, while his aspirations to literary seriousness sadly encourage director Phil Joanou to drag it all out in an attempt to justify the portentious title.
The good news is all in the supporting cast, with Roberts splendid as the upwardly mobile crimelord who gets mad when people leave drinks rings on his table, and fine work from three of the most undervalued actresses in the movies: leggy Lynch as the doomed wife (this character was the heroine of the first novel, The Neon Rain), an unusually unplugged Masterson and, best of all, Hatcher as a marvellously trampy femme fatale with a butterfly tattoo and a come-hither leer.