Hollywood Hustle

January 15, 2024
General Hospital actor Lindstrom debuts with a ho-hum thriller about a movie star caught up in a kidnapping plot. Aging actor Winston Greene discovers that his daughter, Clarissa, has been kidnapped when a man shows up at his suburban Los Angeles home with Clarissa’s six-year-old daughter, Amy, in tow. Amy hands Winston a thumb drive with a video of Clarissa’s abduction on it, and her captors demand Winston’s “movie money” as payment for her return. His accounts, however, have long dried up, so Winston enlists two friends, cop Teddy Beauregard and stunt man Grover Washington, to help him track down and rescue Clarissa. There’s no shortage of violent action, and Lindstrom manages a few effective cliffhangers, but he too often relies on excessive description (“A very thin, very old man lay prostrate on the bed. His chest was concave, his extremities pencil like”) and paint-by-numbers characterization to make up for the threadbare plot. Even hardcore fans of L.A. noir are likely to find this lacking. Agent: Liza Fleissig, Liza Royce Agency.