Review – The Mean Season

Kurt Russell and Mariel Hemingway star in this run-of-the-mill thriller about a newspaper reporter who receives calls from a serial killer. Though David Berkowitz’s notes to Jimmy Breslin clearly provided at least some inspiration for the drama, this movie goes in entirely different directions from the Son of Sam killings. For openers, it’s set in Miami rather than New York. And the killer and journalist end up a lot more closely involved. Overall this isn’t terrible, particularly as psycho thrillers go, but it does rely heavily on the less desirable facets of the genre (particularly the repeated, graphic victimization of women) without providing a lot of compensating rewards for enduring the experience. Mildly amusing