Miguel Ferrer stars as Charlie Pope, a second-rate screenwriter who's having trouble keeping his producer (Harvey Fierstein) happy. Charlie takes a trip down to Mexico to research the script he's currently working on – a murder mystery based on a real killing. Once in Mexico, Charlie begins to discover there is more to the case than he thought, and he soon catches the attention of several people that don't want to murder solved. To complicate matters, our hero meets a sexy woman (Leilani Sarelle) who seduces him on the beach. But before he can roll around in the sand with her, Charlie is knocked out, and one of his kidneys is stolen. Now he has more things to worry about than if he can make his screenplay work, as the black market organ harvesters that stole his kidney decide to come back for the other one.

Sitting down and rewatching The Harvest after something like ten years, I remembered what I liked about it the first place: It has a great concept. Essentially, writer-director David Marconi has put together a complex throwback to the noir films of the 1940s and 50s, with Ferrer cast as the down-on-his-luck hero, and Sarelle as the sexy femme fatale. Marconi populates the world of his film with a colorful cast of supporting characters actors, including Henry Silva as a cop in Mexico that may be more closely involved with Charlie's problems than he's letting on, and Tim Thomerson as an ex-pat American living the hedonist life.

The biggest problem with The Harvest is that Marconi doesn't give the film enough grit. Set in the grimy world of black market organ harvesting, The Harvest is a bit too well lit and polished looking, when it could benefit from a more rough edge. It seems as if Marconi is too interested in making the ugly world of his film look pretty, and that dilutes the whole experience. The film is also lacking in character development, and some of the scenes play out a bit clunky, with contrived dialog that sounds a bit too cliché.

Despite the problems The Harvest may have, it is still an entertaining enough movie, with an interesting twist or two that makes it worth watching at least once.

Video:
The Harvest is presented 1.33:1 full screen and has been modified from its original aspect ratio (whatever that was). The picture transfer is far from good, and looks like it was probably mastered from an old video source without any sort of clean up. The only difference between watching it on DVD and VHS is the format, and certainly not the quality.

Audio:
If you consider the picture quality on The Harvest to not be good, then you'll find the sound to be just plain bad. Presented in Ultra-Sound, the sound mix is low, meaning you're probably going to have to crank the volume on occasion if you want to hear what's going on, and even then you run the risk that the score may drown out dialog (which may not be a bad thing depending on the scene).

The Film:
There are no extras on The Harvest. The film, however, does have the bonus of a cameo appearance by Ferrer's cousin George Clooney, who plays the "Lip Synching Transvestite" at a gay bar in Mexico.