Miami Hustle (A.K.A. Hello, She Lied) (1996)
Directed by Lawrence Lanoff
Written by Phillips Collins, Daniel Miller
Produced by Douglas Bruce, R. Ben Efraim, Danny Dimbort, Avi Lerner, Trevor Short, Terry Simmons
Starring Kathy Ireland, Audie England, Richard C. Sarafian, John Enos III, Eduardo Yáñez, Allan Rich, Larry Weber, Ed Amatrudo, Shareef Malnik
Petty profit and restitution for her troubled brother’s debt to his sleazy creditor (Sarafian) motivate a leggy griftress (Ireland), who chances upon amity and amour with her latest marks — a successful designer of video games (Enos) and a strip’s club’s shapely shot girl (England), the unwitting heritor of an impending windfall. England and Ireland accord better than their national namesakes, both reliant on beauty and screen presence to offset histrionic limitations shared by most of their co-stars. They’re also fashionably underweight, diametrical to bewigged, corpulent Sarafian, who’s not as impressive before as behind the camera. Its few crafty twists differentiate Collins’s and Miller’s story from those of most libidinous, cablecast crime dramas, but its fundamental aim remains: pretty leads simulating steamily stylized sex; as Ireland’s congress was evidently cut, England’s typecast as the sole lustily stripped vixen. Luxuriantly modern homes and Kevin Sepe’s goofy music are more rememberable than most else in Showtime’s vehicle for Ireland, a frippery best reserved for her fans. For everyone else, superior films on fleecers abound.
Instead, watch The Hustler, Paper Moon, The Sting, Harry in Your Pocket, The Color of Money, or The Swindle.
