When her husband gets bumped off by his gangster boss (Dean Stockwell), Angela (Michelle Pfeiffer) moves from her Long Island house to a railroad flat on the Lower East Side, hoping to start a new life; but neither the boss nor an FBI agent (Matthew Modine) posing as her neighbor will let her alone. Director Jonathan Demme’s farcical and broad 1988 comedy, written by Barry Strugatz and Mark R. Burns, doesn’t really work, but there are plenty of enjoyable compensations: Demme’s feel for loud, bad-taste decor is as good as it ever was, and there are a fair number of other laughs (even if his efforts to turn Modine into a Stan Laurel figure are doomed from the start), as well as a respectable amount of energy. Pfeiffer is at her best, and there’s plenty of action, although you may feel that some of the gags involving a scorned and vengeful wife (Mercedes Ruehl) are a bit shopworn. 103 min. (JR)