The Mean Season

Stars Kurt Russell, who I like more and more. A melodrama about a newsman who gets too involved with his subject, a serial murderer. A well-made picture, but for the first half gets too caught up in its "moral concerns." The picture is a thriller first, and only really gets going when it stops preaching about the ambiguous distinction between making news and reporting it and lets the plot fly. Then it really packs a wallop; from that point on, it makes the old formulas work--edge of the seat stuff, I mean it.