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Zero Effect
Jake Kasdan 
USA, 1997, 116 minutes
Review by Gerald Houghton (1998)

Lawrence Kasdan used to make films this good. Point of fact, as writer and director he made one film as good as Zero Effect, and that was Body Heat. And as a lovingly crafted pastiche of classic noir (Body Heat nods to Double Indemnity without the comparison being invidious) it's as much a pleasure today as the first time we saw William Hurt and Kathleen Turner. Now though, content to sit out his dotage on second-rate contract fodder like Grand Canyon or French Kiss, it seems Kasdan's ready to pass the torch to his son. And with his own debut (at the tender age of 22), Jake Kasdan's fashioned what's ostensibly a crime thriller as a calling card. 

Gregory Stark (a puffy Ryan O'Neal) buys the services of one Daryl Zero (Bill Pullman), a Los Angeles based private detective, to pursue the blackmail plot against him. Not that Stark and Zero actually meet. As a confirmed agoraphobic, the latter has an unrivalled reputation for resolving cases from a heavily equipped apartment-office. Communication is via long-suffering assistant Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller, very good).

Except that Zero's reputation is founded on a lie. He likes to scrutinise clients, bending his treasured anonymity into 'the two Obs': observation and objectivity. And the more he objectively observes one Gloria Sullivan (Kim Dickens), the more convinced he is that she is behind George Stark's problems.

Which paints the events of Zero Effect in rather pedestrian colours: this is film noir in the manner of that other auteur of urban angst, Alan Rudolph. The linear plot is satisfactorily resolved, but only because it plays second fiddle to a delicately reticent romance. Kasdan's screenplay is never afraid to span pathos and raw emotion.

This picture's success is due not to engagement with Stark and Sullivan's schemes, but to our feelings for the latter and the basket case detective. And Pullman is terrific. His Daryl Zero is the consummate professional in public, a ragged, petulant, pill-popping teenager behind closed doors. Gloria, on the other hand, has cracked the art of the public and private life, enough to hatch her vengeful plot against Stark, but retains enough touching vulnerability to break through Zero's act. They make for a fiercely sympathetic couple.

Kasdan uses the seemingly anonymous Portland to charged and vaguely sinister effect, much as Rudolph did with Montreal in Afterglow. His is a clearly precocious talent, at home with location as much as with character, his script as finely nuanced as his subtly measured and distinctly unselfconscious direction. Much more of this - and much less of Kasdan Senior's frequently insipid adult populism - and this is one son destined to eclipse the father even before he's out of his twenties. •

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