A near miss of an attempt to create a classic film noir in a modern-day setting, this crime thriller from screenwriter E. Max Frye and director Volker Schlondorff boasts a nifty plot twist or two but also a curiously flat tone and a major miscasting. Based on the classic pulp novel Just Another Sucker by James Hadley Chase, the story has enough bite and energy to keep viewer interest. Particularly effective is the idea of the film's anti-hero being hired as a press liaison by the same police department attempting to discover who kidnapped a wealthy teenager, when in fact it was the new press liaison who did it. Too, almost every scene between lead actor Woody Harrelson and supporting player Chloe Sevigny crackles with "who's playing who" vibes. Harrelson is perfectly cast as a typical noir archetype: a guy skilled and street-smart enough to be an investigative reporter but just desperate, libidinous, and dumb enough not to see that he's being duped. If only the same could be said of the film's female leads. Elisabeth Shue is positively leaden as the smoldering love interest, her beauty the only element of her performance that's remotely convincing. So awful is her performance that it provokes snickers instead of gasps. Then there's Gina Gershon who struggles in the role of the dutiful, supportive girlfriend who's being cuckolded; she's proven herself to be far more adroit in femme fatale roles before and probably could have played Shue's part with little effort. Palmetto (1998) reaches a few heights on its way to a just-okay conclusion, but because films of this genre are only as good as their actors, a little more attention to casting would have been very much in order here.