Dress Gray

In this 1986 whodunit, the death of a cadet at a U.S. military academy provides the basis for a story dealing with repressed homosexuality. The screenplay has great misdirection. You think the plot is headed one way, only to find at the end that it was headed in the opposite direction. Clues to the crime's solution are provided, but as with any good murder mystery, they are subtle and hard to find.

The acting ranges from good to excellent. {Hal Holbrook gives his usual, and endearing, deep-throated raspy voice performance). Production values are high. And the music is suitably eerie. Cinematography is quite good, and the film's ending has an Oliver Stone "JFK" feel to it, a sense that you are privy to the revelation of a cover-up (at the highest levels of course).

My only complaint is the verbose script. They could have cut back the forty thousand page screenplay considerably, without doing harm to the overall story. Nevertheless, "Dress Gray" is a well-crafted film, with an engaging plot that would, in my opinion, be of interest to anyone who enjoys a good murder mystery.