With a strong cast and intriguing premise 'Looker' .... looks impressive. But it's NOT! By "strong cast" I mean Playmate Of The Year Terri Welles. She visits Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Albert Finney requesting some very specific changes down to .1 millimeters.The movie's off to a great start with Welles getting topless within the first five minutes. However the scene is so brief I literally watched the movie THREE TIMES before I even noticed this scene! WTF? This is the money shot! That's like having the chariot race in 'Ben-Hur' last only three seconds! Welles and other of Dr. Finney's patients turn up dead. The movie might as well be over! Terri Welles is dead within SIX MINUTES!!! WTF? They've all been thrown off balconies by a killer whom looks like John Holmes or Chuck Norris from the cover of 'The Good Guys Wear Black.' The only model not killed is Susan Dey. Susan Dey? Susan Day from 'L.A. Law' is our leading lady and trying desperately to be sexy? This is the final nail in the coffin for the film.Not even villain James Coburn can save this wreck, and he wasn't even in the trailer.The master plot revolves around an evil company developing an illegal super weapon... a ray gun which causes the victim to lose time. That's how they killed the girls. This seems pretty far fetched for a petty weapon. If they wanted a silent non lethal weapon Thomas A. Swift already beat them to it. Or they could just use a tranquilizer gun. But since they killed the models anyway, and not silently, they could have just used a gun, knife, or blunt object! Their ray gun is pretty pathetic.Why did this company kill its own models? That's never explained! This whole movie is a waste of time. The trailer promised me a movie staring Terri Welles but she's dead by the time the credits end. Skip this mess at all costs.

Dr. Larry Roberts is a well renowned Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who makes beautiful women even more so, however he captures the attention of the police when three of his model patients are strangely murdered. Seeing a link with the three, he's determined not to let the same thing happened to the fourth girl, Cindy. There he finds further information about a program called Digital Matrix, where a computer system photographs and measures models to create a duplicate image for TV.Novelist Michael Crichton again hit's the director's chair (fourth time after 'Westworld', 'Coma' and 'The First Great Train Robbery') to adapt his material (which he also contributed the film's screenplay). The gimmicky 'Looker' is a polished piece, but definitely lesser than that of his previous outings. What lifts it up out left field is its audaciously sophisticated look at the manipulative side of media advertising, digital technology advancement and the dependency on perfect appearances. Crichton seems comfortable with these pervasive paranoid sci-fi thrillers where we take everything for face valve, but underneath there's something not quite right or waiting to destruct. There's a real sharp edge to the scientific theories (with some nicely amusing satirical digs), however with its dead-serious tone it can fall into silliness, illogical occurrences and its big aspirations aren't always matched, but in the end there's a real strange quality to the story (like the optical gun) and the visuals that go on to make it rather striking. Too bad about the ending fizzling out. Crichton's direction keeps it clinically tight as the energy levels arise in the last 30 minutes of blindingly staged suspense. Barry DeVorz's suggestively trance-like electronic score gels well with eerily smoky atmospherics. The performances by the likes of Albert Finney, Susan Dey, James Coburn and Leigh Taylor-Young all remain solid. Also appearing are Tim Rossovich and Dorian Harewood.Flawed, but engrossing entertainment.

Not awful. Michael Crichton's techo-thriller has a lot of great ideas floating around, but few are really fleshed out enough to make for a really good movie. Albert Finney plays a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who stumbles upon a plot to kill off models (many of whom were his patients). The trail leads to a conglomerate run by oily James Coburn and his sexy goon Leigh Taylor Young. What he uncovers is a pretty clever plot to replace the models with computer generated replicas, thus allowing them to work forever without aging or getting paid. Unfortunately, the leaden pacing of the movie does it in. Finney seems surprisingly engaged, but Crichton has directed nothing. In fact, his direction here (as it was with COMA) is so without personality it has a deadening affect on everything. Coburn is fine in an all too brief role and Susan Dey is terrific as one of Finney's luckier patients.

A plastic surgeon in Los Angeles investigates after some of his most beautiful clients--all fashion models--turn up dead. '80's thriller looks dated now, however it has a terrific set-up and proves to be absorbing and exciting for about a third of its length, later resorting to assembly-line theatrics. Michael Crichton, who wrote and directed, certainly isn't enigmatic (he's a filmmaker who always cuts right to the chase), yet in hindsight his script makes very little sense. The cast is good, particularly Susan Dey as Albert Finney's sassy sidekick, but the characters themselves are awfully one-dimensional. Strictly as a time-filler, not bad. **1/2 from ****