General’s Daughter, The

Two army officers (John Travolta, Madeleine Stowe) investigate the grisly torture, rape and murder of the daughter of a politically prominent general. The hardest kind of movie to review is a lousy murder mystery because its lousiness is usually inseparable from its idiotic plot, which the reviewer absolutely must not reveal. This one is as lousy and idiotic as they come, with a plot that strains credulity at every turn, plot twists that play more like cheap tricks than genuine surprises and an ending that comes for no better reason than that the movie’s been going on for two hours and it’s time to wrap things up. Also straining credulity is Travolta’s performance, alternating a cornball hillbilly accent with the kind of jut-jawed snarl that is Hollywood’s standard view of military life.