Eddie Bianco
Created by Jose Pablo Feinmann

Nervous, weaselly private eye EDDIE BIANCO (The Practice's Michael Badalucco) teams up with his old buddy, sardonic, mouthy piano man Jack Hanaway (Dennis Leary), a caustic, bitter would-be writer with a drinking problem, in this competent, straight-to-video B-picture, which Kevin Thomas of The L.A. Times called "intelligent and stylish but not nearly original enough to warrant a trip to your local multiplex."

With the help of Jack's torch singer girlfriend, Vicki Rivas (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), a smoldering beauty and his longtime lover, Eddie and Jack plan to blackmail a local businessman (played by Terence Stamp) who's married to a very wealthy, and jealous woman.

A solid showcase for edgy comic Dennis Leary, as Jack, and veteran actor Terence Stamp shines as the wealthy business man who's more dangerous than he seems. Badalucco more than holds his own in the relatively small, but crucial role of the private eye.The Times goes on to conclude that "Like a lot of other neo-noirs, Love Walked In...could just as easily have been made in the '40s, drawing more from other movies than real life." The general consensus on this one is good, slightly above average, but not great, though Roger Ebert wasn't quite as pleased (see below).

UNDER OATH

• "...the elements are here for a decent film noir. There is, first of all, good casting. Leary has been in a lot of movies lately, but this is the one where he really emerges: He began as a comedian learning to act, but now you can see that he has the stuff, that given a good script he could handle an important role....The plot whips itself into a frenzied payoff...Love Walked In has the right moves for noir: the melancholy, the sexiness, the cigarettes, the shadows. But you have to believe in the characters, and their capacity for evildoing. These characters act like they saw Double Indemnity' on TV once, and thought they could do that stuff themselves, and were wrong." (Roger Ebert)

FILM

• LOVE WALKED IN ..Buy this video
  (1998, Columbia Home Video)
  90 minutes
  Adapted from a novel by Jose Pablo Feinmann
  Written by Juan Jose Campanella, Lynn Geller and Larry Golin
  Directed by Juan Jose Campanella
  Producer: Ricardo Freixa
  Executive Producer: Jorge Estrada Mora
  A TriStar Pictures presentation of a Jempsa Entertainment and Apostle Pictures production
  Starring Denis Leary as Jack Hanaway
  Terence Stamp as Fred Moore
  and Michael Badalucco as EDDIE BIANCO
  Also starring Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Marj Dusay, Danny Nucci, Moira Kelly, Neal Huff

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.