Here's a quirky little thriller you might have missed.  It's certainly worth a view.

Rollie Tyler (Bryan Brown) is an f/x man - he does special effects for the movies.  In fact, his company is called "F/X", which gives you a situation where the movie's man character drives around in a van with the movie's logo on the side.   He's the guy you go to for the realistic explosions and shootings and inhuman creatures. 

Rollie is approached by a man named Lipton (Cliff De Young) who wants to hire him.  No, he's not a producer, he's with the Justice Department.  The Feds have a Mafia insider who wants to sing.  The Mafia naturally opposes the notion, so he has to be kept alive, and the best way to do that is to convince the mob that Nick DeFranco (Jerry Orbach) is already dead. 

So they want Rollie to pull off one of his realistic blood-spurting shootings, not in a studio, but in a public restaurant.   Rollie takes the job and the faux-hit goes off like clockwork, with Rollie in the role of the shooter. 

But then everything goes haywire.  With the enigmatic comment, "No loose ends", Lipton pulls a gun and tries to shoot Rollie.  Rollie escapes and calls Lipton's boss Mason (Mason Adams), telling him what happened.  Mason is concerned and tells him "stay right there", promising to send a police car to take him to safety. 

But when the police car arrives, it opens fire on Rollie too! 

So Rollie is on the lam and doesn't know who he can trust.  He doesn't even know if DeFranco is alive or dead.  If his gun's blanks were replaced with live bullets, he just killed the man.  The newspapers are full of stories about the shooting, but they would have been anyway if the hit had been fake.  So what exactly is going on - and why? 

Into this mess saunters Leo McCarthy (Brian Dennehy).  Leo is that figure so beloved of crime movies, the cop who 'plays by his own rules'.  You know, the guy who keeps investigating after the "give me your gun and your badge - you're suspended" scene - that guy.  He's on Rollie's tail, and he thinks the official story of De Franco's death stinks. 

Rollie, wanted for murder and also targeted for murder by the people who hired him, has to investigate as well - he has to understand what's going on, both to avoid being killed and to avoid being arrested for a murder he either didn't commit or was tricked into committing.  His weapons are unconventional ones, because he's using his own expertise - the art of illusion.

F/X is a treat for crime thriller fans - you have the usual shootings, explosions and car chases, but you also have a protagonist who's a trickster.  You're never sure what's real and what isn't until the end. 

Oh, and Bryan Brown spends a gratifying amount of time shirtless.  (Okay, so I'm shallow.)

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