NO OFFENSE INTENDED

It sounds simple enough: Just pick up Sleaze John Garillo’s baby Asia from the neighbor who’s been watching her while Sleaze has been, uh, busy, and deliver her together with her baby gear to Sleaze’s sister Lisa Slokum. But nothing is simple when you’re a recovering alcohol-and-drug abuser on probation, like Venice car mechanic Munch Mancini, and nothing is simple when it involves Sleaze, who can’t even make it through the day he turns up at Happy Jack’s Auto Repair without getting himself shot on the freeway. Munch, on her way to check in with her probation officer in Santa Monica, just happens to drive past Sleaze’s wrecked truck and pulls over, marking the first of two times she’ll flee a crime scene. (She also ducks out of an autopsy she’s sneaked into.) Caught between a drug-running sharpshooter who’s firing ammunition stolen from a National Guard Armory and the FBI control freaks investigating the robbery, Munch ends up pairing off in a wary cat-and-mouse game not with saintly Lt. Mace St. John (No Human Involved, 1997), but with Homicide detective Jigsaw Blackstone, who’s already in bed with the FBI, courtesy of the sexiest chess game since The Thomas Crown Affair. Things would look bleak for starchy Munch—if, that is, there were any serious doubt about who’s behind the crime spree. Munch is still a great heroine, but this follow-up lacks the energy and originality that gave her debut such edgy promise.