Director Taylor Hackford is best known for his production of high-energy, sexy movies - notably An Officer And A Gentleman and Against All Odds - so, given the plot of White Nights (Pearl, 9.30pm), it would be reasonable to expect the same.
There's no questioning the strength of the plot. The plane on which a Russian ballet dancer is travelling is forced to land in Russia; the only problem being that the dancer defected to the US 10 years earlier.
Cast dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov in the part - and he knows a thing or two about moving to the West - and you should have a sure-fire success, right? Wrong.
Somehow Hackford manages to produce a dull film.
Though the story is about a dancer, we could well do without the dance sequences that Baryshnikov shares with Gregory Hines, who is tap dancing his way through Moscow in protest at the Vietnam War.
It's not to say that the performances aren't good: Helen Mirren (Hackford's long-term live-in love) adds her reliably powerful presence and Isabella Rossellini is not bad in her usual fey way.
