MOVIE REVIEW : A TRITE-TOLD TALE IN ‘PRETTYKILL’

“PrettyKill” (citywide) is pretty awful, a trite and ludicrous tale about a love affair between a burned-out narcotics cop (David Birney) and a sleek, ambitious call girl (Season Hubley). Their story takes second place to the fate of a young hooker (Suzanne Snyder) who undergoes lurid and lethal personality changes after Hubley has befriended her.

Derived from countless TV shows and low-budget thrillers, “PrettyKill” has scarcely a second with any convincing connection to reality. Since we’re never allowed to understand what attracted Hubley to Birney in the first place, it’s a shock--really, the movie’s biggest--to learn that they’ve been lovers for nine years! The similarly themed “Hustle” was not without flaws, but at least the relationship between Burt Reynolds’ cop and Catherine Deneuve’s call girl was believable.

You have to wonder how Sandra K. Bailey’s script ever got filmed in the first place. The private and professional lives of Hubley and Birney impinge upon each other in only the most mechanical and arbitrary fashion, and there’s precious little opportunity for director George Kaczender to display his specialty, which is sophisticated romance featuring beautiful women in elegant settings (“In Praise of Older Women,” “Chanel Solitaire”).

There seems to be a good rapport between Kaczender and the stunning and poised Hubley, but her high-class prostitute is so thinly drawn that it might as well have been written in invisible ink. Somehow Susannah York manages to make an impression as Hubley’s friend, a good-hearted (but incredibly foolish) madam; Birney and Yaphet Kotto, as his nasty, opportunistic superior, are both asked only to be glum. Snyder goes way over the top with her “Three Faces of Eve” routine, but at least she livens things up.

The establishing shots of Manhattan are laid on so thickly that they only underline the fact that “PrettyKill” (MPAA-rated R for violence) was shot mainly in Toronto. Even so, all that the film really has going for it is Joao Fernandes’ very handsome cinematography.