She came in here like clockwork-something the Center for Missing and Exploited Children had probably told her to do. He poured her some stale coffee from the pot on the nearby stand, just as he had every day for the past three weeks. Vince walked around his desk and eased Sara Prague into a cracked vinyl chair, ignoring the chaos around them. Mike, full-time plumber and part-time Little League coach. It shouldn't have happened to her husband. This shouldn't have happened to Sara Prague, a PTA mom whose world revolved around her kids. It looked as if they planned to stay awhile. Now those lines, that hardness, had made themselves at home. The day her kids hadn't come home from school. The worry lines bracketing her eyes, her mouth, the dry skin, the chapped lips, the sense that she really didn't give a damn what she looked like-those things had been strangers to her that first day. Cops coming and going, keyboards clicking, phones ringing. Altman has since put this turkey behind him with the luminous Gosford Park but I am left wondering why on earth he did it.“ARE MY CHILDREN still alive?' Sara Prague asked the question in a quiet, steady voice that he heard very clearly despite the noise around her. Anyway, an absolute shocker, gross waste of talent and apparently a box office flop (there's some justice). The story, though completely derivative, is actually quite tight, well plotted, and has a convincing resolution, but the lack of light and general confusion make it difficult to follow.

In this film noir genre to achieve tension at crucial moments the audience must know just a little more than the protagonist, not a lot less. Maybe we were supposed to experience the confusion of the lead character as he stumbled towards an answer but this does not make for entertainment. The lighting is awful throughout, the more so that it was done on purpose. The last 20 minutes in the rain is truly appalling, with the audience reduced to guessing about what is going on. He made things difficult for himself miscasting Kenneth Branagh as a boozy Savannah lawyer but the attempt to replicate the feel of a town in the grip of a hurricane really finishes things off.

It takes real talent to make a real lemon, and Robert Altman, a most talented director, has succeeded brilliantly here.

The gingerbread man maggie shayne