Movie Review: Cop (1988)

Genre: Crime Thriller  

Director: James B. Harris  

Starring: James Woods, Charles Durning, Lesley Ann Warren  

Running Time: 110 minutes  

Synopsis: Highly stressed Los Angeles Police Detective Lloyd Hopkins (James Woods) takes on the case of a young woman brutally murdered in her apartment. After his wife and daughter leave him, Lloyd immerses himself in the investigation, concluding that the victim was a feminist and the assailant enjoys poetry and may be a serial killer. Supported by Detective "Dutch" Peltz (Charles Durning), Lloyd tangles with corrupt Deputy Sherriff Delbert Haines (Charles Haid) before seeking insight from feminist author Kathleen McCarthy (Lesley Ann Warren).

What Works Well: Director and writer James B. Harris adapts the James Ellroy book into a gritty crime procedural with neo-noir vibes. Despite no shortage of violence and suspense, the focus is on the character of Lloyd Hopkins, a restless detective with strong convictions, a short temper, and dubious morals, unable to get out of his own way. James Woods injects unrelenting energy into the role, powering through a sordid plot punctuated by sex and blood.

What Does Not Work As Well: The frequency of coincidences and vague plot points is high, even for this type of hard boiled everyone-is-shady thriller. Lloyd's inability to ever read a room and modulate his behaviour confines him to the status of a ticking time bomb, while the third act suffers from an exceptionally poorly defined villain and barely explained motives.

Key Quote:

Lloyd: Well, there's some good news and there's some bad news. The good news is you're right - I'm a cop and I've gotta take you in. The bad news is I've been suspended and I don't give a fuck.

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Movie: The Final Countdown (1980)

Genre: Science Fiction  

Director: Don Taylor  

Starring: Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, Katharine Ross, Charles Durning, James Farentino  

Running Time: 103 minutes  

Synopsis: Captained by Matthew Yelland (Kirk Douglas), the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz is one of the largest warships in the world. While hosting industrial executive Warren Lasky (Martin Sheen), the vessel passes through a freak electrical storm in the Pacific Ocean. It emerges on December 6, 1941, one day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. After rescuing Senator Chapman (Charles Durning) and his assistant Laurel (Katharine Ross) from their sinking yacht (destroyed by a Japanese strafing attack), Yelland, Air Group Commander Owens (James Farentino), and Lasky have to decide whether to change the course of history.

What Works Well: An intriguing "what if" conundrum, this is an imaginative sci-fi military adventure. The production values are high (filming took place on the Nimitz with the full cooperation of the US military), and the cast is filled with quality in the key roles, Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen contributing subdued authority.

What Does Not Work As Well: The premise is much more interesting than the conviction-free execution. Once the Nimitz commanders wrap their heads around the time warp, the movie shifts into sail-in-circles-to-kill-time mode, occupying itself with the fulminating senator, a Japanese pilot plucked from the ocean, and a tepid would-be romance. A good chunk of the running time is consumed by imagery of warplanes taking-off, landing, and conducting surveillance maneuvers. This is dream eye candy material for military hardware fans, but most of these scenes are superfluous to the plot.

Key Quote:

Lasky: Think of the history of the next forty years...

Commander Owens: I have a suspicion history will be a little more difficult to beat than you imagine, Mr. Lasky.

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Movie Review: When A Stranger Calls (1979)

Genre: Suspense Horror  

Director: Fred Walton  

Starring: Carol Kane, Charles Durning, Colleen Dewhurst  

Running Time: 97 minutes  

Synopsis: While babysitting for the Mandrakis family, teenager Jill (Carol Kane) receives a series of menacing phone calls from a mysterious man asking her if she has "checked the children". The evening ends badly, but Jill survives. Seven years later the assailant Curt Duncan (Tony Beckley) escapes an asylum and proceeds to stalk the lonely Tracy (Colleen Dewhurst), pursued by retired detective John Clifford (Charles Durning). 

What Works Well: The opening 20 minutes feature a simple but effective premise: incessant phone calls with one question terrorizing a babysitter in a large and mostly dark house. Carol Kane capably carries this unsettling sequence, interacting with nothing but the phone as she gradually comes to terms with the danger closing in. Director Fred Walton's smooth camera work and interesting perspectives heighten the suspense.

What Does Not Work As Well: Unfortunately, the rest of the movie falls well short. Kane drops out of the middle 50 minutes, as the focus shifts to Curt Duncan (fatefully almost sympathetic) antagonizing Tracy (a context-free woman-in-danger), with private investigator Clifford puffing behind, exerting plenty of effort with little to show for it. The climax abruptly shifts gears with another clunk as Kane reappears to almost save the day, but the damage caused by the choppy structure and large plot gaps is non-recoverable.

Key Quote:

Curt Duncan: Have you checked the children?

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Movie Review: Breakheart Pass (1975)

Genre: Western Mystery  

Director: Tom Gries  

Starring: Charles Bronson, Richard Crenna, Jill Ireland, Ed Lauter, Ben Johnson, Charles Durning  

Running Time: 95 minutes  

Synopsis: In the 1870s, a military train is on its way to Fort Humboldt ostensibly to deliver essential medical supplies. The mission leader is Governor Richard Fairchild (Richard Crenna), accompanied by his lover Marica (Jill Ireland), while Major Claremont (Ed Lauter) commands the military escort unit. At a rest stop, U.S. Marshal Pearce (Ben Johnson) and his prisoner John Deakin (Charles Bronson) join the train trip. But all is not what it seems, and soon murders and mishaps threaten to derail the journey.

What Works Well: Alistair MacLean adapts his own book and director Tom Gries enjoys constructing an Agatha Christie-type mystery in a western milieu, assisted by a lithe Charles Bronson and a supporting cast deep in talent. The final 30 minutes finally kick into gear and deliver a rousing climax, including a harrowing train-top battle to the death choreographed by veteran stuntman Yakima Canutt. The exterior vistas of the train traversing the landscape are elegant, augmented by a magnanimous Jerry Goldsmith music score.

What Does Not Work As Well: The first hour is more annoying than enthralling, the lack of clarity around plot and motivations leaving the characters dangling. Even once revealed, the conspiracy lands somewhere between incomprehensible and unnecessarily convoluted. For a wanted criminal finally captured by the law, Bronson's John Deakin is afforded a remarkable amount of freedom to skulk around.

Conclusion: And then there were guns.



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Movie Review: Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)

A military drama, Twilight's Last Gleaming wields the threat of launching nukes, but sinks into the silos.

In Montana, disgraced former Air Force General Lawrence Dell (Burt Lancaster) breaks out of prison along with convicts Powell, Garvas, and Hoxey (Paul Winfield, Burt Young, and William Smith). They infiltrate and take control of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile launch site. With his finger on the button that could launch nine nuclear warheads towards the Soviet Union, Dell connects with his former commander General Martin MacKenzie (Richard Widmark) and demands to talk to US President David Stevens (Charles Durning).

Dell wants Stevens to publicly release top secret documents revealing the futility of the Vietnam War. MacKenzie crafts a plan for a military assault on the silo base to end the takeover, while Stevens weighs his options with a group of advisors.

Twilight's Last Gleaming enjoys an impressive-looking set at the silo base, and the opening facility penetration is decent when swallowed with a liberal dose of just-go-with-it. But while a rogue General could have plenty of reasons to initiate global destruction, releasing the minutes of a White House meeting about a past conflict must be close to the bottom of the list. Walter Wager's novel may have worked on paper, but the script by Ronald M. Cohen and Edward Huebsch rarely extracts tension out of the doofus premise, and director Robert Aldrich makes matters worse by extending the exercise to a wholly unnecessary 146 minutes.

Minutiae replaces substance and the pace slows to a crawl. Several sequences consist of Dell and his crew in the launch room waiting for President Stevens and his advisors to make a decision, with MacKenzie playing the role of joker in the pack. Aldrich attempts an artificial injection of energy with overuse of split screens, and twice resorts to prolonged handle-this-gizmo-with-care-or-it-will-explode scenes. 

Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark are always watchable and come close to rescuing a few moments. An unlikely choice for President, Charles Durning appears suspicious of his own abilities to convince. He is surrounded by veterans like Melvyn Douglas and Joseph Cotten spouting their lines with earnest plasticity. 

The final act throws logic to the wind, the previously cold and calculating Dell succumbing to a bout of idiocy but only after Stevens opts for a ludicrous plan to end the showdown. The plot suddenly veers towards unearned notions of grand self-sacrifice, further hastening Twilight's Last Gleaming's descent into darkness.



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Movie Review: Sharky's Machine (1981)

A police detective thriller and romance, Sharky's Machine features gritty violence and a sense of camaraderie, but also a klutzy plot and gauche dialogue.

In Atlanta, a botched drug bust results in narcotics police detective Tom Sharky (Burt Reynolds) being demoted to the scorned vice squad, reporting to the excitable Friscoe (Charles Durning). Sharky pulls together a team consisting of Papa (Brian Keith), Arch (Bernie Casey) and Nosh (Richard Libertini). They start to investigate a high-priced prostitution ring featuring $1,000 a night call girls entrapping politicians, including Governor candidate Donald Hotchkins (Earl Holliman).

Sharky sets up round-the-clock surveillance of an apartment occupied by call girl Dominoe (Rachel Ward), and starts to fall in love with her from a distance. The stakeout identifies the shadowy Victor (Vittorio Gassman) as a master criminal grooming women into prostitution from a young age and using them to manipulate political careers. When assassin Billy Score (Henry Silva) enters the scene and leaves behind a trail of murder victims, the vice investigation turns much more dangerous.

Featuring a plot dripping with sex as a weapon, corrupt politicians, victimized women, bloody murders and a detective itching to rehabilitate his reputation, Sharky's Machine should have been much better than it is. Directed by Reynolds and adapted from a book by William Diehl, the film sputters in fits and starts, with an inconsistent tone and misplaced emphasis.

Distancing himself from the frivolous comedies that made him famous, in this outing Reynolds finds a sturdy character on which to build a thriller. Sharky is serious, determined and thoughtful, a detective capable of uniting a "machine" around him, in this case a collection of capable but dispirited detectives. The film admirably explores an emerging team dynamic and invests the time to demonstrate a group of men (they are all men) gelling into a high functioning group.

The pacing and narrative progression are less impressive. The film is soaked in voyeuristic scenes of Sharky intruding on Dominoe's life and falling in love just by observing her. Worse still is a barely-there plot filled with unanswered questions, the antagonists in the form of criminal mastermind Victor and sleazoid politician Hotchkins stamped as evil by the script but otherwise undefined, their intentions and overall context left to the imagination.

Sharky's Machine is not helped by a wooden Rachel Ward performance. The role demands a muse-like commitment to etherality, but Ward is too stiff to deliver, and her scene of verbal and physical sparring with Sharky is an unmitigated disaster. Henry Silva fares worse, his character initially defined as a stone-faced drug-fuelled assassin before crossing the line to almost mythical indestructible status.

The scenes of tension and action are competently staged, and Reynolds boldly strides towards bloodier representations of violence spiced with a torture showdown to augment some grim back alley aesthetics. Sharky's Machine sometimes rumbles to life, but also occasionally misfires.

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Movie Review: The Hindenburg (1975)

A disaster drama, The Hindenburg offers a few impressive visuals but is an otherwise a turgid exercise in waiting for the inevitable to happen.

It's May 1937, and Colonel Franz Ritter (George C. Scott) is recruited by German officials to be the head of security for the airship Hindenburg. One of the symbols of pride for the ruling Nazi party, the Hindenburg is about to embark on the travel season's first journey across the Atlantic from Germany to the United States. A woman from Milwaukee has written a letter predicting the destruction of the vessel, and Ritter, who is still recovering from the death of his son, is asked to keep an eye on the passengers and deal with any possible sabotage threats.

After rigorous security checks the journey proceeds with Captain Pruss (Charles Durning) in command. The passengers include Ritter's acquaintance The Countess Ursula (Anne Bancroft), whose property has been seized by the Nazis, as well as an assortment of businessmen, tourists, entertainers, charlatans, crewmembers, government types and possible spies. Ritter and Gestapo officer Vogel (Roy Thinnes) try to keep tabs on all possible suspects, and eventually Ritter determines that crew member Boerth (William Atherton) may be the saboteur.

With the tragic ending of the Hindenburg rendered as one of history's most well-known disasters by the presence of multiple television cameras, any and all cinematic drama would have to be generated by character-generated stories. Unfortunately director Robert Wise and a trio of writers adapting the 1972 Michael M. Mooney book fail miserably in creating anyone or anything to care about. Despite some beautiful scenic shots of the Hindenburg majestically floating across the sky, Wise's attempts to enliven the journey across the Atlantic fly into severe headwinds. One contrived mid-flight emergency repair job is far from enough to maintain interest, and the film is a listless affair, singularly lacking in personality, meaningful events or any compelling interpersonal drama.

The sabotage plot is one of the more far-fetched and unsubstantiated theories as to why the Hindenburg exploded during the docking process at New Jersey's Lakehurst Naval Air Station. Setting aside the fact or fiction debate, the movie manages to reduce the entire evil plot to one tiny bomb and one nondescript crew member, and adds layers of convoluted implausibility by meandering its way to portraying Ritter as the clumsiest of plot enablers.

George C. Scott affixes a single stern expression throughout the film, his Ritter caught between heroism and incompetence, while Anne Bancroft overacts her way through the role of the Countess. The rest of the cast members are a bland assortment of character actors (among them Gig Young, Burgess Meredith, Richard Dysart, René Auberjonois and Peter Donat) playing distinctly forgettable and interchangeable travelers.

The Hindenburg starts with fake but effective black and white newsreel footage summarizing the history of hydrogen powered airships, and switches back to black and white for the dramatically calamitous climax, juxtaposing real and recreated footage of the crash. Regrettably, all the coloured bits in-between also represent their own special brand of disaster.

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Movie Review: O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

A satirical comedy inspired by Homer's The Odyssey, O Brother, Where Art Thou? features some enjoyable episodes but is a mostly fragmented exercise of scattered ideas looking for a purpose.

The setting is Mississippi during the 1930s with the Great Depression still lingering. Three convicts escape from a chain gang and set out across the countryside. The wordy and cerebral Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) claims to have buried stolen treasure before being incarcerated. His fellow escapees are the tightly wound Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro) and the rather dim Delmar O'Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson).

As they barely stay one step ahead of the chasing posse, the trio encounter various obstacles and characters, including Pete's cousin "Wash" Hogwallop (Frank Collison), crazed bank robber Baby Face Nelson (Michael Badalucco), three distracting singing sirens, guitarist Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King) who claims to have sold his soul to the devil, incumbent Governor Menelaus "Pappy" O'Daniel (Charles Durning), and dangerous Bible salesman Daniel "Big Dan" Teague (John Goodman). The Ku Klux Klan also make an appearance before Ulysses catches up with his wife Penny (Holly Hunter), who is just about ready to abandon him.

Written and directed by the Coen brothers Joel and Ethan, O Brother, Where Art Thou? transposes the ancient Greek poem to the American rural south, suffering under the strain of an economic depression and the sweltering heat. It's all played for laughs, the actors over-emoting at will and most of the dialogue exchanges featuring Ulysses Everett McGill's over-elaborate prose and the stupefied reactions of his chainmates.

The film's pacing cannot be faulted, as each episode lasts about 10 minutes before the next, generally unrelated adventure kicks off. Whether hit or miss, nothing lingers for too long. The better sub-plots feature the trio of prisoners recording an impromptu hit song at an early-era radio station, and an enchanted encounter with the seductive sirens in the forest. Less successful is the run-in with Bible salesman Big Dan, while the chapters featuring Governor O'Daniel seem to rotate in a singular circle.

Wide open landscapes, appealing cinematography and an interesting colour palette that often evokes the photographs of the era maintain interest, while the period-specific folk music often moves to the foreground to provide a soulful kick.

Towards the end the film threatens to completely unravel, a case of too many marginal ideas thrown at the screen and sliding to the bottom due to a lack of cohesion. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is inspired by great literature, but achieves only modest success.

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Movie Review: The Man With One Red Shoe (1985)

A bland comedy set in the domestic spy world, The Man With One Red Shoe is about nothing in particular and struggles to define a purpose.

In Morocco, CIA Deputy Director Cooper (Dabney Coleman), who covets the top job, sabotages an undercover drug operation and embarrasses CIA Director Ross (Charles Durning). Back in Washington DC, Ross is forced to testify before a Senate subcommittee, but plots his revenge against Cooper. Knowing that Cooper is tracking his every move, Ross dispatches loyal ally Brown (Edward Herrman) to the airport to liaise with a complete stranger.

Brown picks violinist Richard Drew (Tom Hanks) at random, and their brief interaction sets Cooper and his crew on a wild goose chase to find out why Drew is important. Drew is actually the victim of frequent pranks by orchestra percussionist Morris (Jim Belushi), and in return Drew is having an affair with Morris' wife Paula (Carrie Fisher). Otherwise Drew is a normal everyday guy, but Cooper's surveillance kicks into overdrive, including mobilizing the luscious agent Maddy (Lori Singer) to seduce Drew and learn his secrets.

Directed by Stan Dragoti, The Man With One Red Shoe is a remake of the 1972 French film Le Grand Blond Avec Une Chaussure Noire starring Pierre Richard. The Hollywood version enjoys slick production value and a strong cast including a young Tom Hanks, but the jokes (if they exist at all) are lame, the story is unengaging, and a void exists where meaningful plot elements and substantive characters are supposed to reside.

Drew is an innocent bystander and remains a most uninteresting central character, and Hanks can do nothing with role. Jim Belushi tries too hard as the immature friend still pulling high school level pranks, while Carrie Fisher gets one long scene in fetching leopard lingerie in a nod to her Return Of The Jedi slave outfit, but otherwise drifts aimlessly in and mostly out of the film.

Cooper and Ross contribute most of the narrative drivers in an astonishingly dreadful spy versus spy battle. Neither man is remotely likable, and who wins or who loses their petty careerist battle generates the flimsiest foundation for comedy. While Dabney Coleman and Charles Durning are fine supporting actors, they cannot carry the weight of the plot or the laughs. Lori Singer nails the role of the seductress and gets to wear a contender for the most stunning backless dress paraded on screen. She also owns the best laugh with a caught-in-the-zipper moment.

The Man With One Red Shoe doesn't so much run out of original ideas; it never had any in the first place.

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The Movies Of Charles Durning

All movies starring Charles Durning and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Sting (1973)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Breakheart Pass (1975)

The Hindenburg (1975)

Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)

The Greek Tycoon (1978)

When A Stranger Calls (1979)

The Final Countdown (1980)

True Confessions (1981)

Sharky's Machine (1981)

Tootsie (1982)

Scarface (1983, voice only, uncredited)

The Man With One Red Shoe (1985)

Cop (1988)

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

One Fine Day (1996)

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

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Movie Review: Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Based on a true story, Dog Day Afternoon is about a low-key bank robbery that goes wrong and turns into a media circus. It's a sizzling cinematic achievement, and among the finest of the New York based dramas of the 1970s.

Former bank employee Sonny (Al Pacino), the highly stressed Sal (John Cazale), and the hesitant Stevie (Gary Springer) walk into a bank with a vague idea of how to rob it. Stevie immediately finds the pressure too much and bails. Sonny realizes he chose to rob a bank that has barely any money: the vault deposits were transported out earlier in the day. As Sonny and Sal scramble to empty the cashier tills and then needlessly converse with the bank manager Mulvaney (Sully Boyar) and the team of cashiers, precious minutes are wasted. By the time Sonny and Sal are ready to leave, the small bank is surrounded by hundreds of cops. Sonny and Sal are now besieged hostage takers.

As a large crowd gathers and the media descends onto the scene, Sergeant Moretti (Charles Durning) tries to negotiate with Sonny, but Moretti is as incompetent as the robbers, the negotiations go nowhere, and the assembled crowd start to cheer on Sonny's anti-authoritarian rhetoric. As the hours pass, the robbery takes a bizarre turn when Sonny's motives for the theft are revealed, and his complex private life becomes suddenly very public. With Sal losing patience and everyone sweltering in the heat and humidity, FBI Agents Sheldon and Murphy (James Broderick and Lance Henriksen) take over the site, determined to bring down the curtain on the spiralling spectacle.

A small story that takes on epic proportions, Dog Day Afternoon is about losers lost in an uncaring world. Director Sidney Lumet crafts the film around a hopelessly out of his depth Sonny, and creates a tragedy around a man with modest criminal ambitions but who finds every facet of his misadventure falling apart. One accomplice flees, the other is a dangerous combination of dim and murderous, the money isn't there, his own mother and wife can't tolerate him, his hostages keep falling ill, and the heat grows ever more intense literally and figuratively in the form of half the New York police department waiting to pounce.

Although Sonny's afternoon starts badly and just gets worse, Dog Day Afternoon is also about the emerging culture of throwaway fame, Sonny getting a few hours of publicity and becoming a temporary hero to the massed crowd by whipping up anti-police sentiments. It's a small victory in a miserable afternoon, but it feels good to Sonny while it lasts. When it emerges that Sonny's private life is a sideshow all onto itself, the bank robbery almost gets pushed to the background as his bizarre personal relationships unleash a second wave of supporters and opponents shouting each other down.

Working from a Frank Pierson script that celebrates peculiarities and makes them normal, Lumet keeps the movie agile and hot despite most of the two hours taking place at the bank and its immediate surroundings. Lumet colours the bank's small corner of Brooklyn with shades of yellows and browns to emphasize the unrelenting heat. When the lights and air conditioning are turned off late in the proceedings to increase the pressure on the hostage takers, Sonny's sweat spills off the screen, while Sal just broods darker and refuses to ever take off his jacket.

Al Pacino gives an intense yet powerfully sympathetic performance as Sonny, the robber quickly becoming human, filled with self doubt and forced to try and think his way out of a much stickier situation than he ever bargained for. It is one of Pacino's most perfect performance, controlled aggression and real doubt filling his eyes and dominating his actions.

John Cazale supports with few words but plenty of menace, Sal carrying a potent rifle, and unlike Sonny, seemingly ready to use it. More fatalistic than Sonny and ready to sacrifice rather than negotiate, Cazale allows Sal's coiled frustration to emerge as the wildcard of the afternoon. Chris Sarandon as a member of Sonny's family has a small but key role, while Carol Kane appears as one of the tellers held hostage.

Dog Day Afternoon chronicles a farcical situation where no one was in control, where anything could have happened, and the crackling heat was the only certainty.

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Movie Review: Tootsie (1982)

A comedy about gender politics, Tootsie delivers excellent laughs with sharp social commentary, propelled by a virtuoso Dustin Hoffman performance.

Michael Dorsey (Hoffman) is a struggling actor based in New York City. Passionate about his craft but with a reputation for being difficult to work with, Michael's career is slipping away into low-key suburban theatre productions. Desperate for a last chance at stardom, and much to the horror of his agent George (Sydney Pollack, who also directed) and room mate Jeff (Bill Murray), Michael dresses up as a woman, adopts the persona of Dorothy Michaels, and lands the part of a hospital administrator on Southwest General a tawdry but popular daytime television hospital drama.

Michael gives Dorothy an independent, feminist edge, shaking up the show and quickly becoming the toast of the town. But Michael's love life starts to get really complicated. As Dorothy places more demands on his time, he neglects potential girlfriend Sandy (Teri Garr). Meanwhile, Julie Nichols (Jessica Lange), who plays the resident tarty nurse on Southwest General, finds herself strangely attracted to Dorothy, and Julie's widower dad Les (Charles Durning) is also quite smitten with the new star. Finally, the lecherous but semi-senile John Van Horn (George Gaynes), who portrays the senior doctor on the show, sets his sights on Dorothy as his next sexual conquest.

The unusually rich screenplay (co-written by Barry Levinson and Elaine May, among others) is able to maintain focus on the hearts of three characters, as Michael, Julie and Les all undergo journeys of discovery about what really matters in their lives. With a light touch but deliberate steering by Pollack, Tootsie delves into the skirmishes between the sexes, uncovering plenty of new angles to explore.

Michael thought that transforming into Dorothy would provide a superficial career boost. Instead, Dorothy became the change agent through which Michael gains a new perspective on his relationships. Michael becomes a better human being as Dorothy, with unexpected consequences.

While Michael's dour intensity and serious mannerisms mostly turned everyone off, Dorothy demands and provides R.E.S.P.E.C.T., and as it turns out, love and affection flow smoothly and in all directions when mutual respect is a common foundation. It becomes only normal that Dorothy's honest, open, playful and forthcoming personality attracts both Julie and Les. In Julie's case the purity of the relationship almost overcomes traditional gender boundaries, while for Les, Dorothy's virtue proves to be an immediate attraction to a widower.

Dustin Hoffman delivers an extraordinary performance, measured by how quickly the make-up is forgotten, and how powerfully Dorothy's presence as a woman is established and maintained. Michael's occasional stumbles in Dorothy's heels serve not only as comic touches, but also as a reminder that there is an actor beneath all those womanly clothes.

Jessica Lange, coming off career-making but highly intense roles in The Postman Always Rings Twice and Frances, demonstrates a glow for serious humour, Julie a much more interesting role than most comedies accommodate. Julie is allowing herself to be belittled in front of the camera as the airhead nurse, and off-camera by the show's director (Dabney Coleman). Dorothy proves to be an inspiration, and maybe more, prompting Julie to change her attitude towards relationships and more importantly, towards herself. Lange won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award, the only win from 10 nominations received by Tootsie.

Terrific depth is provided by Durning, Garr, Coleman, Pollack, and Geena Davis making her screen début in a small, barely dressed, role. Durning, in particular, finds the sadness within a jovial but lonely man looking to fill the void left by the loss of a life-long love. Bill Murray pops up unannounced as Michael's laid-back room mate, providing acrid commentary on a pantomime spiralling into an unintended life experiment.

As it turns out, sometimes a man needs to walk in the heels of a woman to better understand what being a man really means.

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