It's incredibly odd. Almost a fusion of neo-noir and western, it's little more than a series of armed showdowns that end in one of two ways. It's never really explained, but the gunfights are presented as some sort of game in which people are cordially invited to their own execution. "Fast Draw" Goldblum (perhaps a little miscast as the mobs main gun) either shoots some guy dead at the end of the scene or plays his trump card: he knows where the bosses girl is, and then exits stage left. Each happens three or four times with the apparent aim of killing off everyone in the credits.
The plot could be described in a sentence, everyone is a caricature and it's a bit like watching a Dick Tracy movie that's taking itself a little too seriously, but it does have a few redeeming features. By no means any of the actors finest work, they do all appear to be having a good deal of fun, hamming it up and swanning about in nightclubs carrying guns. Much of the dialogue, especially from Gabriel Byrne, I found incredibly pleasing. It's sharp and poetic, with puns, plays on words and running themes. It's entirely unnatural and makes the whole affair seem very peculiar, almost dreamlike (one character has just been released from the nut house and I began to suspect it was all a fever dream) but it kept me entertained, and redeemed what would otherwise been a shockingly amateurish movie with reasonably high production values.
It reminded my, probably due to a cameo by Joey Bishop (his son being the director) of old Rat Pack movies, that were chaotic affairs that seemed more concerned with their own entertainment than the audiences. They too were slightly tangled, aimless affairs that didn't worry too much about such trivial matters as plot as they had something strong to pull them through, in that case characters in this, dialogue.
