I'm enjoying reruns of the first season of CRIMINAL INTENT, which has both D'Onofrio and long-haired Erbe in fine form. But this segment suffers from poor direction of the actors by good ole Steve Shill, the maestro who "graduated" to directing last year's candidate for trashiest movie honors, OBSESSED starring Beyoncé.
Here he's piloting an even more beautiful woman, my choice of greatest all-time from the Victoria's Secret catalog, Stephanie Seymour. Needless to say, he doesn't do her, or the viewer justice.
-SPOILERS AHEAD-
Not helping is a contrived, never convincing script, about a shrink (Michael Gross, who should be ashamed of this particular performance) who kills his would-be girl friend's brother-in-law to try and win her affections (!) He's crazy like a fox, so he follows his textbook of mentally-ill symptoms and convinces everyone of his erratic behavior before D'Onofrio & Erbe can track him down as the killer, all the better to plead insanity and get off with an ultra-mild punishment.
This nonsense is built around an even less digestible hook of suspected child abuse that sets the whole scheme in motion, involving Stephanie's niece being abused by her dad, the murder victim. That subplot is resolved in a tasteless manner, just to add sensationalism to an already idiotic plot line.
Shill handles this admittedly inferior material flatly, with Seymour sleepwalking through her role -a shame, since we have so few opportunities to see this beauty act -last time I can remember was in Ed Harris' POLLOCK. IMDb says these are her ONLY two acting roles, period, so Shill wasting her is unforgivable. He could have used a potted plant for the result shown here, and (revealing my particular bias), we don't even get to see her fabulous legs! Gross, as already mentioned, muffs his nutsy role -I didn't believe him for a minute in or out of character(s). D'Onofrio is allowed to ham it up shamelessly when interrogating Gross -again I fault the "director". Always reliable J.K. Simmons offered a few seconds of relief as a good-guy psychiatrist, but overall this episode lands with a deadly thud.