After 61 straight days of watching movies specifically to review and sitting and take notes during the films and analyzing everything about the movies, I find that I can't just stop on a dime, so here is a brief write-up of an unlikely film.
I thought that Lethal Weapon really launched the "buddy-cop" craze of the late 80s and early 90s, but this film actually predates it by a year. I could not find, on Wikipedia, a buddy-cop film that pre-dates this one however, apparently the buddy-cop genre actually came from
television and was so popular it ended up getting translated to the big-screen. Director Peter Hyams, of
Outland,
The Star Chamber (a personal favorite), and
2010: TYWMC fame, looking to do something a bit more grounded, took a script from MGM about to elderly cops in NY who wouldn't retire and had it transformed to two young cops in Chicago (a city not frequently filmed in at that time) considering early retirement over the frustrations of their job.
By modern sensibilities, this movie probably has a lot of pause-giving moments about how cops should be able to handle criminals and how loose they should be able to play with the letter of the law, but if you accept that their behavior was contemporaneous to the attitudes of the times, this is a pretty entertaining and enjoyable film. Largely this is because of the undeniable charisma and chemistry of its two leads (though I liked Jimmy Smits in this quite a bit too as a one-dimensional but very credible post-
Scarface arch-villain).
"Running Scared" transcends its dreary roots and turns out to be a lot of fun. Most of the fun comes from the relationship between the two cops, who are played by Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal as if they were both successfully stealing the picture.
Their good luck starts with an encounter with Snake (Joe Pantoliano), a two-bit hood who has $50,000 in his briefcase. They want to arrest Pantoliano but don't have anything to charge him with. So, in a brilliant scene, they convince Pantoliano to request arrest: Crystal loudly tells the neighborhood hoods that Pantoliano is carrying 50 grand and requests them to keep an eye out for suspicious perpetrators.
The intelligence and wit flowing between them are so palpable you can almost see them, and there and so many throwaway lines that even the bit players get some good ones.
- Rober Ebert
Hines, we've talked about recently, was such a talented man he added to every film he was ever in, from
History Of The World to
The Cotton Club (god, his tap scene is just breathtaking). And Hines fought hard for this role, which was written as a white cop, apparently, saying, "I just campaigned and campaigned for it until I got it. I'm proud because this is the first film that stars a black guy and a white guy - and the black guy has all the sex scenes. Usually, the black guy has no sexuality at all." And his talent was not lost on Crystal, who helped tweak the dialogue and did a good bit of improv, saying, "You can't do those kinds of things unless you have an actor like Gregory Hines who is there to catch you." It was not lost on Hyams who, despite apparently being hard to work for, praised both leads for their performance and chemistry. I thought it was also noteworthy that, while the two main female characters were only in service to the male leads (as all supporting characters are in service to the leads of films regardless of gender), they had actual personalities and lives and the film took the time to make you actually like them both. To a lesser degree, the new up-and-coming rival cops were a little bit more than one-dimensional. That matters in a film.
Finally, the thing that I need to say about this film is that it's totally competent and coherent. Everything occurs for a reason and not just to rush to the next set-piece. For example, the climax doesn't take place where it does just because it's a cool-looking building, it is chosen by the villain and when you see it, you totally understand. It is a wide-open space that has clear sight-lines in every direction and the walls are glass... so the hero cannot bring any backup and cannot sneak in or pull any shenanigans (though they find a really amusing way). The point of this is the difference between a well-made film like this and how bad mainstream filmmaking has become.
After spending two months watching movie after movie from '99 or earlier (in some cases, much earlier), I think I am finally succumbing to
Modern Mainstream Filmmaking Sucks Syndrome. To see a film like this, which received mixed reviews in its day, and realize that I have not seen a mainstream studio film this good in years, is a splash of cold water to the face. In the shadow of the once character-driven but now
dismal Marvel Cinematic Universe, it seems like nothing is good at the cinema anymore. I mean, the last few Marvel and almost all of the
DC films make the early
Transformers movies, movies I refused to see because of how bad they were in their day, seem like
Citizen Kane. So now, outside of the occasional populist film about some war veteran, we have small, independent films that occasionally break through but mostly you have to find at a smaller theater or at home.
It is funny to me that it didn't take a
Great Film but a film with a 59% on
RottenTomatoes (before Review Inflation began), to finally break me of any notion that mainstream cinema wasn't dead.
But also, this movie's fun.