Good Shepard

New York bears down like a mental disorder on the protagonist of Mercy, 31year-old director Richard Shepard's new independent feature (released this month). As this millionaire lawyer suddenly finds himself playing laboratory rat for the amusement of a vengeful kidnapper, the city confronts him with cherry-red blood on the seat of a taxi, vigilante youths in Harlem who knock him cold, and villains whose game knows no rules.

"Actually, I think New York is a relatively friendly city," says native son Shepard. "Twice a day people ask me for directions, and I'm very nice about it." But when it came to making a thriller with money borrowed from friends, Shepard didn't worry what the tourist board might think. You'd have to be living in a bubot to see there's major anger and racial unrest here."

So the second-time director, whose first feature, The Linguini Incident, had the misfortune of opening in L.A. on the weekend of the 1992 riots, turned his lens on New York's dark side, dropping a Bonfire of the Vanities social collision into a movie-world Gotham last seen circa The French Connection. What's eye-opening about his 70s dig is seeing how little Hollywood now cares about inner drama. Shepard knows how to tease and please an audience, but his primary interest is in watching his arrogant antihero, played by Tony winner John Rubinstein, take one tiny step toward grace. Getting that drama in the can for $52,000, Shepard set a new quality standard for cut-rate features. Credit that achievement first to the determination of the auteur, who resisted lucrative offers to make it someone else's way. But don't neglect the city itself, which provided him a backdrop that adds millions of dollars, by the director's estimate, to the movie's look: "You put a camera on the street in New York and it looks great," he says. "It's hard to screw it up."

CHRIS MITCHELL