“You want to be rich, you have to learn how to smile.”

Coming off the stylishly violent crime-romance China Girl and a couple of well-received episodes of Miami Vice, a pulpy Elmore Leonard adaptation seemed like the perfect fit for Abel Ferrara.

Adapted from Leonard’s novel of the same name by the author himself and James Borelli, Cat Chaser stars Peter Weller as a former paratrooper turned motel proprietor who manages a rundown beachfront establishment in Miami. He’s been trying to track down a young native Dominican sniper (Maria M. Ruperto) who saved his life during the April Revolution.

But things get complicated and murky—and the mercilessly truncated final edit only exacerbates the narrative disharmony—when he rekindles a relationship with the American wife (Kelly McGillis) of a sadistic Dominican general (Tomás Milián), and falls in with a perpetually-soused fellow military veteran (Frederic Forrest) and a sleazy ex-cop (Charles Durning) who plan to dispossess the general of $2 million. Feints, double crosses, rapes, and unsavory humiliations at gunpoint ensue.

Something I learned a long time ago, General. Never take out your joint with guys you don’t trust.

Ferrara has apparently screened a three-hour cut of the film on occasion, but that version has never seen a wide release. Well, neither has the studio-butchered “theatrical” cut, which never actually played in theaters because the hacked-up 90-minute cut isn’t all that good. Despite a few noteworthy touches—black-and-white footage of the invasion, occasionally brilliant dialogue from Leonard, pleasant mise en scène, a nice score from Chick Corea—the whole thing lacks a discernible impetus.

After about twenty minutes, the plot becomes needlessly convoluted as two half-developed threads vie for prominence, and the lethargic pacing and wooden acting (Durning is a notable exception) fail to do justice to Leonard’s juicy dialogue. Worst of all is a pathetic voiceover (delivered by Reni Santoni because Weller refused to do it) that destroys any sense of immersion at each of its frequent intrusions. There’s a certain achievement of atmosphere in the sunbaked locale and the rich wordplay that suggest a better picture might have resulted. In this case, the adage that the book is always better than the movie holds true.