Whatever caused the project to misfire it cannot be plausibly blamed on the fine cast of Nick Nolte, Melanie Griffith, Chazz Palminteri, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Treat Williams, Jennifer Connelly, Daniel Baldwin, Andrew McCarthy and John Malkovich.

Director Lee Tomahori had just made the excellent but small domestic drama ONCE WE WERE WARRIORS and like so many break-through indie-type directors was handed a bloated Hollywood project to fail with. It's an impossible situation because the new guy lacks the experience in handling such a project and, even worse, lacks the clout to keep the producers from tampering the thing the death. In the end Tamahori has gotten up to speed as a big movie director recently helming DIE ANOTHER DAY which I consider one of the better James Bond movies.

This film is about the adventures of a 1940's special anti-gangster police squad in Los Angeles, the infamous 'Hat Squad.' The four members of this squad are big, tough, no-nonsense cops who don't hesitate to break the law, if it suits their purposes. When a local woman is murdered, their investigation turns up the fact that she had been romantically linked to several prominent men and had secret films taken of her liaisons. Since one of those men is the powerful U.S. Army General at the head of the then-new Atomic Energy Commission and another is the (married) leader of the Hat Squad, complications ensue. The FBI even gets involved in an attempted cover-up.