THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU’RE DEAD——beware creeps bearing a smug title.  The debut project for director Gary Fleder (who would later do a respectable job with Runaway Jury) this 1995 attempt at a modern noir is just another of the many clone-offs vying for attention in the wake of a wind called Tarantino.

Dismal reviews and a weeping public response of $530,000 left producers with $8,000,000 worth of egged faces. Precocious pseudo-hipness and a reliance on violence wears itself out long before its 115 minutes died (in Denver and everywhere else).

It has one almost-redeeming feature in a ferocious performance from Treat Williams, so good it deserved a much better movie. He rules the material that otherwise does nothing more than pay bills for Andy Garcia, Christopher Lloyd, William Forsythe, Christopher Walken, Bill Nunn, Jack Warden, Steve Buscemi, Fairuza Balk, Gabrielle Anwar, Bill Cobbs, Jenny McCarthy, Buddy Guy, Don Cheadle and Tiny Lister.  Degenerative script thinks giving cast cute names can fool you into thinking it’s clever, so the actors are saddled with ‘Jimmy the Saint’, ‘Pieces’, ‘Franchise’, ‘Easy Wind’, ‘Critical Bill’ ‘Mister Shhh’, ‘The Man With The Plan’ and ‘Baby Sinister’.  Thumbs way up for Treat, way down for the rest of this bilge.