Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

bregund Oh yeah? You know, you might want to mention that little tidbit, I don't know, towards the beginning of the film instead of waiting for the very end. Suddenly Jeff Fahey's character is an earring designer, how convenient. And as a sketch artist, he is naturally granted complete access to the crime scene, even though he has no reason for being there. Oh, he's there to do a floor plan. Right. After forensics has been through taking thousands of photographs, suddenly the sketch artist is granted access to do a floor plan. Have they ever asked him to do a floor plan before? His car-sized partner is sent to arrest him, even though it's clearly a conflict of interest, and instead of arresting him he allows him to merrily skip around town stealing cars and looking for the extremely obvious killer, something that the incompetent detectives are somehow completely incapable of doing because they're, you know, stupid, while Jeff Fahey's character is qualified to solve the crime because he employs all of his skills as a sketch artist. Yes, it's all as dumb as it sounds, and even the payoff leaves one wanting; what is Sean Young's motivation for cheating, she could just as easily have walked out on her husband, there was no reason for her to stay with him.

Robert J. Maxwell Jeff Fahey is a sketch artist working the the LAPD. Drew Barrymore has witnessed someone entering the house of a murder victim and describes the woman's appearance. When Fahey finished his sketch, it looks like his wife, Sean Young. It not only LOOKS like her; it's a virtual PORTRAIT, with vibrant colors, a little beauty spot, and every hair of her wild do in place. This leaves Fahey disturbed.He doesn't confront his wife at first, but his suspicions gradually grow as he discovers for the first time that she was doing some kind of fashion work for the murder victim. It gets a little more intense when he discovers one of her ear rings at the crime scene.Young is very casual about it all. Yes, she was a client of the dead guy but so what? Her ear rings? She lost them somewhere, why? Drew Barrymore turns up a corpse in the LA River, which used to be a nice river before they covered it in concrete and cluttered it up with dead bodies. The LA River Revitalization Corporation is working to turn it from a concrete ditch into an urban oasis. That's fine, as long as they keep the corpses out. In my experience, they've shown themselves to be unresponsive to friendly overtures.In the course of the investigation, Fahey becomes a suspect himself and turns rogue. He spends the film unraveling the clues and the ending comes as rather a surprise.It seems long and plodding at times. The performances are professional but no more than that. The villain has a smooth voice and a face that, if it were a household appliance, would have to be an old-fashioned laundry washboard. The direction is pedestrian.But think of the tangled plot -- poorly executed though it may be. It's classic film noir. If it weren't in color, and if Victor Mature or Glenn Ford or somebody had been the lead, and it had been shot with striking shadows and kick lights, it would be a noir exemplar.

OhKatieLaughs One of the first things askew with Sketch Artist is the complete mismatching of Fahey and Young. The casting agent must have been on drugs to think that the brittle Young and the jacked up Fahey could have chemistry. Their love scenes are uncomfortable and unbelievable. When they embrace passionately, Young is so passive and Fahey is so unhinged, the tendency would be to fear for Young's safety if, in fact, it would be possible to fear for a character who seems so soulless and vacant. The problem is, of course, that this interpretation does not follow the plot line since Young is the one who is clearly supposed to be in control.Fahey's and Young's characters are alike in one way, however: both of them feel contrived. Young seems like she's just coasting on her remarkable looks. Fahey is a bundle of acting tricks: flinging his cigarettes angrily out of windows, throwing things on the floor in fits of angst and yelling (unconvincingly) angry things. When he's not throwing cigarettes, papers, or words, he's posing partially unclothed. Not that Fahey is a bad looking guy, but the presence of so many scenes--Fahey shirtless, partially shirtless, walking around in his underwear, or dressing--is pandering, and so annoying.The plot was as unbelievable as the characters. There are multiple instances of the narrative not supporting the characters' actions, improbability (for example, another poster here pointed out that Fahey steals a car and never gets caught--even has a police car pass him without repercussion. He also breaks into multi-million dollar homes where there is, apparently, no security) and predictability. Drew Barrymore was wasted in a role that required her to stumble through an indifferent witness description and play dead (interesting that her armpits are notably unshaven. How quirky is that?).On a positive note, there are some pleasant surprises. Fahey's car doesn't ever start so he's always bumming rides. There's a delightful (yet unfulfilling) scene where Jack questions a woman (Stacy Haiduk?) in her home and she shares her last can of beer with him by pouring part of it into a china cup.Throughout this movie I kept thinking, "Someone is hoping to get a sequel out of this." I was right because three years later, the sequel to this squealer appeared--Sketch Artist 2: Hands That See.All in all, not a horrible film, for a TV movie, but not a good one. It has a few redeeming moments and is enjoyable for the horrible clothing if nothing else.

moonspinner55 Jeff Fahey has such alert eyes and a smudgy, insidious smile that every character he plays seems villainous; therefore, it doesn't really work to cast him as the good guy of the piece, the audience is just waiting for his character to crack and start blowing people away. Drew Barrymore, fresh off her acclaimed role as "Poison Ivy", must have done this film simply as a favor to director Phedon Papamichael (he was the cinematographer on "Ivy"); playing a character named Daisy Drew (!), she's bumped off right away, which leaves us with no one to look at but Jeff Fahey and Sean Young (who hasn't had a single subtle moment on camera since "Blade Runner"). This witless script, by Michael Angeli, concerns a police sketch artist who draws his own wife's face from a murder witness's testimony, and while that's not a bad idea for a plot, it would be much better suited to an hour-long TV series. This cable-made movie is short on inspiration (beginning with the casting) and shorter on surprises. * from ****