Keys to Tulsa

Tulsa, Oklahoma, a seedy sweat-joint propped up on a little oil - Jim Thompson would know his way around here. Stoltz is a reporter, not fundamentally bad, just weak and in with the wrong crowd, who gets ever busier wallowing in trouble. His ex (Unger), a sometime femme fatale, has started batting eyelids at him again. Her brother and Stoltz's old buddy (Rooker) likes to run around drunk waving guns in the air. Her low-rent husband (Spader) looks like an Elvis impersonator in black and wants Stoltz in on a plan to blackmail the local oilman's son for the murder of a black prostitute. Meanwhile his mum (Moore) is repossessing her offspring's home. Spader and Unger make their mark, but the film's initial possibilities all close down long before the finish. Harley Peyton's screenplay (from a novel by Brian Fair Berkey) is weak on plot and motivation, and the finale - side-lining characters at its own convenience (signs of a last minute change?) - comes as a considerable anti-climax.