Hollywood hotshot executive Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins, Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival) is receiving threatening postcards, and since he is a hated yuppie exec, the missives could be coming from anyone. From the opening shot’s explicit reference to Touch of Evil, The Player is a dense metatext, brimming with movie lore and stars. It takes on the shape of a thriller—a convincing one at that, murder, sex, and all—and pillories the business of film, but it is undeniably catnip for movie lovers. Robert Altman himself called the film “a mild indictment. Things aren’t really like that. It’s much worse.”