Well, what mother wouldn't do as much for a child? Harry's misgivings are silenced by Rhea's seductive charms, while Nina observes in concern (her role reminded me of Barbara Bel Geddes in ''Vertigo''--the good girl with the paint brush, looking up from her easel each time the bad boy slinks in after indulging his twisted libido).
Harry is, of course, spectacularly bad as a kidnapper (I liked the scene where he types a ransom note on his typewriter and flings it from a bridge, only to see that he has misjudged the water depth and it has landed in plain sight on the mud). While he leaves fingerprints and cigarette butts (''DNA? They can test for that?'') about, there's a neat twist: The assistant D.A. in charge of the kidnapping case (Tom Wright) hires him as a press liaison. So the kidnapper becomes the official police spokesman.
All of the pieces are here for a twisty film noir, and Harry's dual role--as criminal and police mouthpiece--is Hitchcockian in the way it hides the perp in plain sight. But it doesn't crackle.
The director, Volker Schlondorff (''The Tin Drum'') doesn't dance stylishly through the genre, but plods in almost docudrama style. And screenwriter E. Max Frye, working from James Hadley Chase's novel Just Another Sucker, hasn't found the right tone for an ending where victims dangle above acid baths. The ending could be handled in many ways, from the satirical to the gruesome, but the movie adopts a curiously flat tone. Sure, we have questions about the plot twists, but a better movie would sweep them aside with its energy; this one has us squinting at the screen in disbelief and resentment.
The casting is another problem. Gina Gershon and Elisabeth Shue are the wrong way around. Gershon is superb as a lustful, calculating femme fatale (she shimmers with temptation in ''Bound'' and ''This World, Then the Fireworks''). Shue is best at heartfelt roles. Imagine Barbara Stanwyck waiting faithfully behind the easel while Doris Day seduces the hero, and you'll see the problem. Woody Harrelson does his best, but the role serves the plot, so he sometimes does things only because the screenwriter needs for him to. ''Palmetto'' knows the words, but not the music.
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