There are a couple of things I am certain about with regard to this movie. First, I know it came out in or prior to the year 2000. The other things I’m certain about are two very specific scenes that I can remember nearly every detail except the faces of the actors in them. I too have an extensive knowledge of film and actors; that’s why this is so frustrating. I’ve already scoured IMDB looking at the CV of actors who I think may have been in the movie to see if it jogs my memory, to no avail. I have done Google searches, I have gone on message boards, I have done just about everything I can with the exception of hypnosis to try to remember this movie. Hopefully you can help. Here goes.
The plot involves a guy who is trying to expose corruption in a police department. Pretty common plot. The protagonist is either a former cop/private investigator or a journalist or something like that. He already knows people in the police department and, in fact, is friendly with the police chief who may be blind to what’s going on in his department. I remember two scenes in particular in almost shot-for-shot detail.
Here’s the first scene. The camera shows the protagonist in the kitchen talking on his phone. He is estranged from his wife and kids who are not living with him but he speaks with the wife often. The shot is from the POV of the front door looking through the opening between the counter and the kitchen cabinets. You see him talking and pacing back and forth while he’s talking on the phone. The doorbell rings and while he’s still on the phone he goes to the front door and opens it. A man dressed as a cable repairman tells him that there have been some outages in the area and asks to look at his television. The protagonist allows it but is still distracted because he is in the middle of his phone conversation. He goes back into the kitchen and at some point he looks at the television. The “cable guy” is gone and he sees the front door ajar. He suddenly realizes something is wrong so he runs upstairs to the bathroom, looks in the toilet tank and finds that the “cable guy” had planted a brick of cocaine in the tank. As he’s doing this he hears cops busting into his front door downstairs. He grabs the brick of drugs, throws open the bathroom window and tosses the brick onto the next door neighbor’s roof and runs downstairs.
The cops grab him, cuff him and set him down on the floor of the kitchen. A bunch of cops are in the house and one of the bad cop characters is talking to him menacingly as if he’s in big trouble. This is happening as he waits for the other cops to search the house. At one point one of the cops who was searching the home comes and whispers into the ear of the bad cop. You don’t hear what he says but the audience knows that the bad cop is being told that he didn’t find any drugs in the toilet (where they were supposed to be). You see the surprise on the face of the bad cop because he knows that someone had just come in to plant the drugs there. There’s a knowing look between the protagonist and the bad cop because they both know what happened and the bad cop is pissed that his scheme didn’t work.
The police chief shows up and I can’t remember the dialog but as I mentioned before, there is no bad blood between the police chief and the protagonist but he is oblivious to what’s going on and tells everyone to clear out. That’s how the scene ends.
Later in the movie is the second scene I remember. In this scene, cops are staking out the protagonists house. For some reason the guy isn’t supposed to leave the house or he can’t leave the house because he knows he’s being watched. The camera moves between the inside of the car and the point of view of the cops watching the house, and then inside the house where we see the protagonist. It’s raining heavily and the protagonist has an idea to use the drugs that he threw on the neighbor’s roof to expose the corruption of the cops. I don’t remember the exact plan with regard to how he’s going to do it but the tension in the scene comes from the protagonist climbing out of the upstairs bathroom window at the rear of the house, jumping onto the neighbor’s roof and retrieving the brick of cocaine he threw there in the earlier scene. Again, it’s raining like hell and he’s doing all of this out of sight of the cops who staked out his home.
That’s all I can remember. I could list to you some if the actors I thought may have been in the film but I won’t because I’ve already researched it and I don’t want to put any ideas in your head that might throw you off. I will say that there actually is one other scene where his wife comes over with the kids and the actress who plays the wife has hair like Annabella Sciorra did in the movie Mr. Wonderful http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107613/mediaviewer/rm48584704 but it wasn’t Annabella Sciorra who played the role I’m talking about.
This has stumped me for going on 18 years now. I posted this on IMDB’s “I Need to Know” message board and many people stated that they those scenes as I described them sound familiar but no one could name the movie. I also researched this on www.whatismymovie.com and other similar sites to no avail. Most of them suggest that the movie is An Innocent Man starring Tom Selleck. That is NOT the movie. Also, it is possible that it is a television show episode but I don’t think it is. This was before long form cable television shows became so common and popular and based on how the plot played out it is more likely to be a feature.
Please help!