Death and the Compass from Cuentos de Borges (1992).
IMDb meta-data is a runtime is 1 hour and 22 minutes, rated 5.9 by 512 cinematizens.
Genre: Strange; Species: (Jorge Luis) Borges.
DNA: Hispanic.
Verdict: Odd.
Tagline: To begin is to end.
A jeu with the classic trench-coated detective set in an unpleasant future Mexico City where police and criminals comprise most of the population, battling each other. Peter Boyle is under the fedora with a Dr Who in tow. Borges’s recurrent metaphor for life, the labyrinth, explains events insofar as they have explanations.
The copper seeks his own murder(er) and he finds it (him). For a parallel conceit read Alain Robbe-Grillet’s krimi Les Gommes (The Erasers) (1953). Boyle brings nothing to the part which is written more like a cartoon character than a person.
Striking theatrical sets and costumes combine with weak acting and directing, e.g., a couple of long pauses suggest missed lines. A very attenuated conclusion in which Dr Who thinks he is doing Shakespeare. Much padding with an internal narration that adds nothing but time, stretching the 55 minute television program to feature film length.
This was the final episode of six made for television, derived from the elliptical stories by the Jorge Luis Borges. It appeared with praise on a previously reliable website about Sy Fy. Not so. Not so. And no longer reliable.