MOVIE REVIEW : Romantic Comedy Takes an Ugly Turn in ‘Mystery Date’

“Mystery Date” (citywide) opens strongly, with a shy, sweet-natured teen-ager (Ethan Hawke) maneuvered deftly by his slick older brother (Brian McNamara) into an evening on the town with a beautiful young woman the wet-behind-the-ears youth has been worshiping from afar for months (Teri Polo, in a delightful, vivacious film debut).

In these initial sequences, McNamara is simply wonderful, so breathtaking in the swiftness of his glib machinations and line of gab that we have precious little time to wonder about his true motives and therefore tend to accept him as a top-flight operator expansively making a gesture on behalf of his inexperienced younger brother.

Yet all the while there’s something unsettling about the older brother’s total lack of scruples, creating a queasy feeling that’s quickly confirmed when Hawke’s Tom and Polo’s Geena are plunged into hair-raising, high-risk danger almost immediately upon driving off in older brother Craig’s pristine ’59 DeSoto Firelite convertible (which has a corpse in the trunk and soon will have another).

So cleverly is the film launched that we have every reason to expect that we’re in for a conventional romantic comedy instead of one that incorporates an action-filled thriller.

The film is fast and funny enough that it just might make it with at least a portion of the youthful audience, but director Jonathan Wacks and writers Parker Bennett and Terry Runte lack the inventiveness to sustain the panache of their premise.

After setting up their adventure so adroitly, they let it lapse into fairly routine comedy and action antics with the usual high quota of violence that stretch credibility at every turn. The result is that, once under way, the film in effect is never again up to the level of its terrific cast.

Hawke is irresistible as a good kid who must assert himself as never before if he is to save both his neck and that of Polo, whose Geena greets every unexpected twist and turn of the plot with a mixture of perplexity and excitement, which gives way to outrage and terror. She and Tom cross paths with a gleefully ruthless young Chinatown underworld chieftain (B.D. Wong, in an all-stops-out performance as a sort of hip Mr. Wu) who’s under the impression that Tom is Craig, who has double-crossed him.

Filmed in Vancouver, “Mystery Date” (rated PG-13 for violence and bloodshed) benefits considerably from highly varied and photogenic locales, many of them shot in that city’s sizable Chinatown.

If there’s finally too much that’s merely formula--e.g. the filmmakers assume that we’ll unhesitatingly buy into the notion that police are all inherently stupid--we at least are able to enjoy its talented young stars.

‘Mystery Date’

Ethan Hawke: Tom McHugh

Teri Polo: Geena Matthews

Brian McNamara: Craig McHugh

B.D. Wong: James Lew

An Orion Pictures release. Director Jonathan Wacks. Producer Cathleen Summers. Screenplay by Parker Bennett, Terry Runte. Cinematographer Oliver Wood. Editor Tina Hirsc. Costumes Jori Woodman. Music John DuPrez. Production design John Willett. Art director Willie Heslup. Set decorator Kim MacKenzie. Sound Rob Young. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG-13 (considerable violence).