Traces of Red (1992) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Roger Ebert hit this one right on the head:

"Sometimes, watching a thriller, I'll realize it makes no sense at all - unless the killer was working closely with the screenwriter. "Traces of Red" is a movie like that. The movie mystifies you as it goes along, but that's nothing to the confusion you feel when it's over. It's not that you don't understand what happened. That's finally all too clear. It's that you can't understand how the killer was so clever that he was able to anticipate every twist and turn of those pursuing him, so that he could devote every action to the service of the movie's plot."

James Belushi is a womanizing cop investigating a multiple homicide. All the clues seem to point back to him - the dead girls are his ex-lovers. Therefore, we assume, the killer is either mad at Belushi and trying to kill the people that Belushi loves, or else he's simply trying to frame Belushi himself.

So it boils down to this:

• Belushi's partner suspects Belushi's brother. This part was played by a tall good-looking guy who did not resemble Belushi's real-life brother, the late John Belushi.
• Belushi himself suspects a fat mafioso with a grudge to settle.
• Then, for a while, they both suspect Lorraine Bracco, as a high-spirited rich woman who managed to sleep with Belushi for a prolonged period without ever being the subject of any of the attacks. Is she jealous of the others? Bracco, for reasons not clear to me, managed to do a perfect impersonation of Melanie Griffith in this film, including the voice and the blond hair. I heard her voice and thought, "I didn't see Melanie in the cast". I looked at her, and still thought it was Melanie. Then I looked closer.
• Then, Belushi starts to think that his own partner might be trying to frame him.
• Or, is all that to throw us off the track, because Belushi really did it?

Any of these five characters may have been responsible. When we finally see which one, there is no great relief of suspense or pleasure of surprise. There was no puzzle to solve. There were no secret clues hidden in the script that allowed us to play along. It was simply a coin flip - which one did it? When they finally revealed the secret, I didn't care. I had no reason to suspect one over the others, but neither had I a reason to rule anyone out. The script was deliberately opaque and convoluted just for the sake of misdirecting the viewer. There weren't even really that many plot twists. Mostly, there were just small events that turned our suspicion from one suspect to another.
 

There was a big surprise at the end, and I was fooled by it, but I didn't care.

I don't understand why they took this excessively complicated script, miscast Jim Belushi as a suave ladies man, then kept him from being funny. If he had cast a consistently wry eye on the proceedings, it might have been an entertaining movie. As it stands, it is a pure formula film - "hard-boiled detective narrates bittersweet, complicated adventure or love and betrayal over sad saxophone score". 

In fact, I was surprised to discover that this film had a theatrical release. Before I researched it, I had assumed it was a straight-to-vid or made-for-cable.