Dread, drugs, and doom are omnipresent beneath the sun-burnt surface of a lonely Los Angeles in James Bridges’ unsettling mystery about a Brentwood bank teller (Debra Winger) adrift after the murder of her on-again, off-again fling, struggling to put together the jagged pieces of how and why and who may be next. A complex character study out of place in the decade it was released, Mike’s Murder is hauntingly atmospheric and Antonioni-esque, with Pauline Kael calling it “Bridges’ most original and daring effort.”
