Remake of: "The Big Clock" (John Farrow, 1948)

As good a demonstration as any of the virtues of using B-movies as the foundation for better B-movies, Roger Donaldson’s cracking military thriller relocates John Farrow’s domestic 1948 noir – itself more faithfully based on a Kenneth Fearing novel – to the wholly new context of Cold War-era US naval law. Perhaps the more essential update, however, is the degree of steam permitted by 1980s censors: Kevin Costner and Sean Young, both in their movie-star prime, sex up material that was always asking for it.