Taglines: The world’s most private detective.
Zero Effect movie storyline. Daryl Zero is an enigma. In his personal life, he is a paranoid, anti-social recluse whose sole interaction is with his business associate. In his professional life, he is the most famous and best private investigator in the world who can command any fee he desires. His anti-social behavior extends to his work, which means that all his transactions are conducted through his exasperated representative and sole field agent, former lawyer Steve Arlo, who often wonders if it is worth working for who he considers a total freak for the price of his sanity.
Zero can often solve his cases from the comfort of his own home using his extraordinary powers of deduction – which he attributes to two associated “obs”: objectivity and observation – but when he is required to do field work, he always does so incognito, he convincingly assuming whatever role required. His latest client is Portland based timber baron Gregory Stark, who is being blackmailed ($700,000 which Stark has thus far paid out, with no end in sight to the payments), with the blackmailer also having stolen a key to Stark’s safety deposit box.
Stark refuses to disclose the nature of the supposed dirt the blackmailer has on him, or the contents of the safety deposit box, which he states has no bearing on the case. Arlo believes Zero is required to go to Portland himself to work on this case. Zero quickly finds out who the blackmailer is – a paramedic named Gloria Sullivan – but wants to find out the reason for the blackmail before Arlo divulges the information to Stark.
In the process of finding out the reason, which takes a little longer than usual just because he is finding it difficult to read Gloria’s motivations, Zero begins to lose one of his obs for the first time and brings into question if Stark or Gloria is the true victim. It also threatens to turn Zero into somewhat of a normal human being.
Zero Effect is a 1998 mystery film written and directed by Jake Kasdan. It stars Bill Pullman as “the world’s most private detective”, Daryl Zero, and Ben Stiller as his assistant Steve Arlo. The plot of the film is loosely based on the Arthur Conan Doyle short story “A Scandal in Bohemia”. The film was shot in Portland, Oregon. It was scored by The Greyboy Allstars. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.
Film Review for Zero Effect
The brilliant nerd hero from the Pacific Northwest is overdue in movies. So one finds his way into ”Zero Effect” in the form of Daryl Zero, an aging hippie Sherlock Holmes with the household habits of a Howard Hughes. As played with wild-eyed foxiness by Bill Pullman, Zero is a wealthy recluse living in a penthouse on canned soup and tuna fish, whacking tunelessly at his guitar and occasionally calming down enough to play detective. His long-suffering Watson is Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller), who is a slave to Zero’s whims and cordially hates his boss.
As directed in scattered but promising style by Jake Kasdan, the 22-year-old son of the writer and director Lawrence Kasdan, ”Zero Effect” rambles amiably through the adventures of this self-proclaimed ”greatest observer the world has ever known.” Zero gets caught up in the case of a Portland timber tycoon named Gregory Stark (Ryan O’Neal), who is being blackmailed for reasons unknown. As a master of goofy-looking disguises, Daryl tracks Stark to his health club and begins watching the man keenly, noticing such details as how fast he runs on a treadmill and what time he takes his morning massage.
The film does its best to let him tease Holmesian reasoning out of such slim data. The film begins on a funny note by intercutting Arlo’s slick professional pitch for his boss’s talents with Arlo’s rant to a drinking buddy about what an inept, unpleasant jerk he actually finds Zero to be.
This ought to pave the way for a nicely barbed relationship between the two, but ”Zero Effect” never gives it much room to develop. Instead, Mr. Kasdan leads Zero into a fascination with Gloria Sullivan (Kim Dickens), whom he meets at the health club and immediately identifies as a paramedic for reasons having to do with the way she dries her hair. Zero’s interest in Gloria seems to go well beyond his suspicion that she has something to do with the blackmail case.
”Zero Effect” grows slower and wispier as it delves into the mystery and tries to allow Zero some personal growth. In the process, it loses some of the wit that kept its early episodes lively. Eventually brooding sets in, with Gloria saying things like ”What doesn’t kill you defines you” and the film digging up sad secrets about its characters’ pasts.
None of that is as compelling as Zero’s over-the-top eccentricity, or as the inviting Portland locations that give the film its visual energy. But both Mr. Pullman and the slyly restrained Mr. Stiller keep their characters entertaining even when Mr. Kasdan’s interest is elsewhere. For all its admirable ambitions, this loosely focused first feature has the makings of a better buddy story than detective tale anyhow.
Mr. O’Neal’s scenes with both his wily co-stars are a reminder of his own comic slipperiness in past performances, finding him nicely in tune with this genre material. Ms. Dickens, lanky and forbidding enough to keep the other characters at arm’s length, offers a newly sporty, no-nonsense version of the old-fashioned woman of mystery.
Zero Effect (1998)
Directed by: Jake Kasdan
Starring: Bill Pullman, Ben Stiller, Kim Dickens, Ryan O’Neal, Angela Featherstone, Hugh Ross, Sarah DeVincentis, Michele Mariana, Aleta Barthell, Tyrone Henry
Screenplay by: Jake Kasdan
Production Design by: Gary Frutkoff
Cinematography by: Bill Pope
Film Editing by: Tara Timpone
Costume Design by: Kym Barrett
Set Decoration by: Maggie Martin
Art Direction by: Philip Messina
Music by: The Greyboy Allstars
MPAA Rating: R for language.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures (United States), Warner Bros. Pictures (International)
Release Date: January 30, 1998
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