Somewhere between the goofball Shell Scott and the dour Philip Marlowe lives Ed Noon. This debut outing leaves him in a bit of a no man's land - he's too casual with the wisecracks for the murders he's directly involved in,not to mention the casual anti-Chinese racial slurs slung around by anyone on screen for more than a chapter. It also doesn't leave us particularly excited by his romantic decisions. As always, the bad guy is the one with the slightly less than normal physical appearance, and the gay mobster. Noon finds his feet eventually but not here.