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Review

Heat rises from director Schlöndorff's steamy noir thriller. Harrelson plays a certified loser who becomes enmeshed in a loony kidnapping scheme which is out of control and over his head. Released after serving two years on a framed-up conviction, he doesn't get far in his intention to get to Miami. Girlfriend Gershon picks him up and ferries him back to Palmetto, the backwater site of his earlier misfortune. Futilely perusing the help wanted ads in a seedy bar air-conditioned by slowly moving palm leaves, Harrelson encounters Shue. Earthy and sensual and willing to forgive his attempt to lift her wad of cash, she offers him a job: to be a threatening phone voice, one element in a plan to extort big bucks from her husband by staging her co-conspirator step-daughter's abduction. Complications ensue. Harrelson is a man with no anchor, and his precipitous descent into this ill-conceived quagmire is related with amusement and wry observation of the baser human foibles.