Bloodhounds of Broadway

An American Playhouse production of a '20s musical pastiche based on four Damon Runyon stories, featuring Madonna as a nightclub singer, Hauer as a gangster, Dillon as a gambler, Quaid as a hapless swain, Grey as 'Lovely Lou', and Hagerty as a society dame. Actually, the performances aren't too bad - even Madonna's, although her squeaky disco voice is manifestly unsuited to period crooning. But even the all-star cast can't impose order or interest on the ludicrous and mystifyingly convoluted plot. Madonna's confession that she wants to drop being a jazz baby and retire to a 'quarter-acre in Newark' to raise babies and chickens might just be worth your attention. But ultimately the film delivers its own epitaph: 'The Brain is dead'. I'm afraid so.