I’ve never been one to complain about female characters with excessive cleavage, long legs and tight-fitting pants in movies. In the noir-ish, pseudo mystery Palmetto, we get plenty of all three from the trio of leading ladies who strut their stuff to get what they want from the movie’s disillusioned hero Harry Barber and I’m still not complaining about that.

Harry (Woody Harrelson) has just been released from serving two years in jail after refusing a bribe and getting framed as a newspaper reporter covering a corruption scam in Palmetto, Fla. Bitter upon his release, Harry only wants to get on with a life away from Palmetto, but his artist girlfriend Nina (Gina Gershon) for some reason convinces him to stay.

Disgruntled as his employment opportunities wash away, he turns from honest newspaper reporter to a kidnapping scheme fabricated by the wife of the richest man in town Rhea (Elisabeth Shue) and her step-daughter Odette (Chloe Sevigny).

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Rhea seduces Harry by shoving her goods in his face, and the teen-aged Odette teases Harry just enough to keep him from seeing too far into the plan. The second skins these evil divas wear would make me submit to raising dough for Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons, so I can understand Harry’s initial reason for taking part in the scheme.

What Harry can’t figure out and what we’re meant to assume is that the deed will be carried out without a hitch simply because the kidnappee has put together the plan with the kidnapper.

We know right away this is not going to work because the ransom doesn’t seem plausible for who these women say they are. Harry can’t seem to take heed of the important and utterly obvious fact that he might be getting set up once again.

So as things fall apart, Harry spends the rest of the movie trying to cut his to the crime. It’s interesting to watch how Harry covers his tracks for awhile, as in the scene where he avoids opening his trunk for a police officer.

Once you get ahead of E. Max Frye’s script, it’s hard to get surprised by anything especially the What were you waiting for?’ ending.

Harrelson has come a long way from the naive, dim-witted bartender Woody Boyd on Cheers. He seems to fit right in as the good guy in a bad situation. We really get a sense of sorrow from the way he gets annoyed with everything from matches to back talk, and it saves the movie from being a total waste.

It’s Gershon and Shue that seem miscast, but that could have been fixed with a good, old-fashioned role switch. Shue just seems too good natured to play the vile vixen. I think Gershon is more seductive and mysterious, and she is more capable of keeping her motivation from surfacing which doesn’t work as the good girl here.

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Harry says at the beginning of the flick that if a writer doesn’t have anything to say, what good is he? If you substitute writer with movie and he with it, then you have a quick synopsis of Palmetto. But Harrelson is good as always and if bursting busts and women in tight clothes are your bag, it might be worth checking out.

Written by E. Max Frye

Directed by Volker Schlondorff