THE PALE GREEN HORSE

An encore for strapping, sexy J.J. Donovan and his quirky, brilliant mathematician-scientist partner, Dr. Boris Michael Koulomzin (Broken Machines, 2000), their metaphoric lances still aimed at foul insurance fraud. Their business cards read “private consulting,” and J.J. likes to say they “champion righteous causes,” but what they really do is tilt at windmills. The quixotic partnership deals with a particularly noxious odor here, catching its first whiff when Boris receives a letter not meant for him. It’s a mistake with painful consequences, he realizes on awakening in a hospital, the victim of a near-successful attempt at vehicular homicide. Viatical settlement is the name of the heartless game the insurance sharpies are playing. They latch onto individuals in extremis—AIDS sufferers, for instance—who are so ill and financially strapped that they can be manipulated into selling their death benefits for far less than they’re worth. Johnny St. John, religious fanatic and bloodthirsty menace, is killing the needy at the command of the greedy, those shifty, shameless exploiters for whom profit is morality and the only sin lies in getting caught. For a time J.J. and St. John go one on one in a series of bruising encounters fought to no decision. But when St. John ups the ante and kidnaps our hero’s beloved, suddenly J.J. finds that the righteous cause he’s championing is his own.

Have you seen their like before—the husky, hunkish man of action and his semireclusive brainiac partner? You betcha. And because it’s all so derivative, it’s all so bland.