John Kelso (John Cusack) is a writer from Town and Country magazine. He's brought to Savannah to write a feature on Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey)'s famous Christmas party. The city is filled with eccentrics. Kelso finds nouveau rich Williams fascinating. Mandy Nicholls (Alison Eastwood) brings him to Joe Odom's party. The next night, he attends Williams' party. Williams' volatile young lover Billy Hanson (Jude Law) is dead after a fight with Williams. Kelso stays to write a book about the murder trial.

Director Clint Eastwood is more interested in the wild crazy characters than any murder mystery. His matter-of-fact style may not be the best for the material. This needs flair. The weird characters could give this movie great moodiness or flamboyance. Either way would be great. Instead, Eastwood is just pointing the camera at them. Some of it is interesting but the movie isn't very engaging.

I think Eastwood did a good directing job, but should have left about 25% on the cutting room floor. It's a good story, with Cusack being the eyewitness to Spacey's millionaire eccentricities. Spacey is one of the most threatening figures in all of acting. Cusack's character is merely a vehicle for the story. Part of the problem for me is the supernatural stuff. The story could have stood on its own without all that voodoo stuff. Also, the character of Chablis, while entertaining at times, gets really tiresome. His/Her appearance in the courtroom is a big disappointment. This person is there for comic relief but really doesn't advance the plot, other than to show us how open minded Cusack's character is. Shorten this film by a half hour and she the superfluities, and it becomes taut and gripping. I did enjoy the defense attorney with his "aw shucks" mentality (Who's Hobbes?),but without our favorite villain, it was not great. Also, the conclusion was too much. Stop it right there.

That's how Broadway veteran Dorothy Loudon describes the powerful, well respected character played by Kevin Spacey, in jail awaiting trial for killing a drunken hustler. The victim allegedly threatened to kill Spacey, and now Town and Country reporter John Cusack (who simply came to Savannah to do a story on the local architecture) struggles to find out the truth. That old fashioned southern hospitality gets him into many high society houses, intermingling with a variety of eccentrics) and a transgendered drag performer (Lady Chablis) who knew the victim "extremely well".

While strange in spots and fascinating in others, this doesn't completely strike the same cord for me that "The Crying Game", yet offers some great performances in unusual characterizations. Spacey, facing scandalous charges in his current life, parallels that ironically 20 years before, and no house of cards can survive this metaphor of a messy 52 Card Pickup. Cusack us good, not outstanding, and Dorothy Loudon plays a southern version of Auntie Mame that gives her some witty lines. Less memorable is Lady Chablis who over deadpans each of her lines and seems to be spending more on shock value than creating a transgender character minus stereotypes.

I would have liked to have seen more of the chanting homeless woman played by Irma P. Hall. Other characters are in introduced but quickly disappear. The conservative Southern city seems far too open minded (or possibly enjoying the scandal) to be believable. An amusing moment has Lady Chablis crashing a ball for Southern black debutantes, with the nerdy young black man completely unaware that he's dancing with a transgender, a bit daring for its day. As directed by Clint Eastwood, this crosses some new lines, but often they are too blurred even when wrapped up in a colorful package.