Sismo

Unlike the earthquake, or sismo, that marks its beginning, this crime story is slow to engage one's attention. Hotel exec Brian Fowler is in Mexico city evaluating hotels as potential purchases when he is indicted on manslaughter charges in the death of a tenant in a rest home he supervised in the States. When the quake hits, he sees an opportunity to disappear. But the dead man's daughter, a movie star intent on avenging her father's death, won't give up so easily. She hires NYPD officer William Bermudez, a Puerto Rican by birth, to find Fowler. Bermudez arrives in Mexico as Fowler is covering his tracks by killing anyone who can trace him. Biederman tosses in a hard-to-credit romance between the starlet and the cop to spice up the unglitzy goings-on, but she fails to render convincingly Fowler's switch from negligent administrator to hard-boiled killer. The tension picks up in a final chase through a demolished building, but such momentum comes too late. (Dec.)