TV REVIEW : Vibrant Details Give ‘Killer’ a Sharp Edge

Jaclyn Smith, in one of her more credible performances and better TV movies, plays a rookie detective in the sturdy Gotham mystery “In the Arms of a Killer” (Sunday night at 9 on NBC).

Writer and director Robert Collins has neatly filled his tight-fisted suspense drama with both gloss and grit so that it casts a sheen one moment and squalor the next. It opens with a grungy drug slaying in a cheap hotel room and segues to a “La Dolce Vita”-Manhattan penthouse scene that is the biggest kick of the movie, a decadent tableaux of tuxedo-dressed sinners and their bejeweled women gathered on divans, surrounded by huge Jackson Pollack paintings, while their host lies murdered upstairs in his bed.

For once, Smith’s shimmering looks are modified by a determined, no-nonsense character who’s on the trail of a killer only an arm’s length away from her throughout most of the movie. She receives sharp support from John Spencer (“L.A. Law”) as her bristling, abrasive NYPD homicide partner and from Michael Nouri as an elegant witness to the murder who becomes a prime suspect.

Nouri and Smith, despite their relationship in the murder case, do have congress in what is the most obligatory romance you can imagine. But Nouri’s prominent surgeon has a major personal problem, exposed in a jolting moment, which gives this urban nightmare an unexpected surprise.

Evident of the pinpoint detail is a hot cameo by Linda Dona as a nervous, gorgeous hooker who discovers the murder victim and then rushes into a swanky ladies room and vomits into the toilet in front of the astonished Smith. Another vivid supporting turn is Gerald S. O’Loughlin’s crusty retired cop who shakes down a hood in a pizza parlor.

It’s scenes such as these that bring the movie to life.