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: Against All Odds (1984)

An overcomplicated romantic drama with neo-noir elements, Against All Odds packs way too much plot around an unconvincing love triangle, but also manages to sprinkle some excellent moments that hint at what could have been a better movie.

Veteran Los Angeles Outlaws footballer Terry Brogan (Jeff Bridges) is reaching the end of his career. Injury prone and considered too old, he is cut from the team, despite having the sympathy of coach Hank Sully (Alex Karras). Deep in debt, Brogan gets no help from his lawyer friend Steve Kirsch (Saul Rubinek) and so accepts an assignment from slimy gambling czar and nightclub owner Jake Wise (James Woods). Wise wants Brogan to find his lover Jessie Wyler (Rachel Ward), who took off on him and stole $50,000 in the process.

Jessie is the daughter of Grace (Jane Greer), the owner of the Outlaws. Grace is married to political fixer Ben Caxton (Richard Widmark), who is working behind the scenes with Kirsch to grease the gears and secure approval for Grace's coveted mountainside development project. Brogan tracks down Jessie in Mexico, and they become lovers, hiding out in the jungle and ignoring Jake's ever more frantic phone messages. Jake finally dispatches Sully to find both Brogan and Jessie, triggering unexpected bloodshed and a return to Los Angeles, as the sordid worlds of football gambling and political corruption collide in a frenzy of blackmail, back-stabbing and violence.

Against All Odds contains several memorable highlights that belong in a better movie. Terry and Jessie make steamy love in a Mayan temple, causing the walls to sweat. Kid Creole and the Coconuts perform the smoothly corrupt My Male Curiosity in Jake's nightclub. Terry and Jake engage in a hair raising, high speed Porsche versus Ferrari duel on the road, weaving in and out of traffic in an old fashioned, dim-witted mano-a-mano confrontation, among the best crazy car chases put to film.

And the closing shot strikes gold. Director Taylor Hackford sustains a long hold on Jessie as she stands on her future and stares longingly as her past leaves her behind, enhanced by Phil Collins' legendary Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now), one of the finest tragic tunes from the films of the 1980s.

But a lot also goes wrong in this movie, a loose updating of 1947's Out Of The Past. There are too many plot threads blowing in the wind and competing for attention. Jake, Kirsch, Grace, Sully and Caxon from a dense nexus of evil-doers, engaged in political corruption, illegal gambling, match fixing, and greedy developers outmanoeuvring environmental activists. With too much going on, the love and lust elements take a back seat and the second half of the film, back in Los Angeles, spirals out of control. Terry gets involved in ridiculous situations to create artificial thriller elements, Jessie's actions are irrational, seemingly manufactured to needlessly prolong a damaged love triangle.

The film finally begins to teeter on the edge of a parody rather than an homage to the film noir genre. Bloodied dead bodies are stashed in bathrooms, guard dogs growl, a minor corporate secretary (Swoosie Kurtz) suddenly reemerges to help Terry break into a safe, guns are waved all over the place, and James Woods as Jake Wise descends into manic intensity mode, blood vessels about to pop as both his love life and corrupt business empire are threatened.

James Bridges and Rachel Ward do generate sustained heat, although Ward's acting is simply not up to par. Her delivery is wooden, almost amateurish, and except for that final shot, she struggles to generate any genuine emotion. Bridges is better, frequently shirtless and more believable as a slightly dim football player with the rug of his life suddenly pulled out from below him. The Eric Hughes script simply forgets to demonstrate any source of attraction between Jessie and Jake, leaving part of the romantic conflict woefully vacant, and reducing James Woods' role to that of slimeball extraordinaire. Richard Widmark and Jane Greer (who starred in Out Of The Past) add welcome veteran sophistication to the supporting cast.

While not exactly a car wreck, Against All Odds is more a lingering curiosity than a good film. There are moments that deserve standing and staring, but also a lot of nondescript debris cluttering the scene.

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Movie Review: Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)

A film noir salute and satire, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid has one trick up its sleeve but wears out its welcome relatively quickly. The splicing of clips from old classic movies into the film's narrative is only a modest success, and too often the story bends awkwardly to accommodate the next available fragment from the past.

Private detective Rigby Reardon (Steve Martin) is hired by the smouldering Juliet Forrest (Rachel Ward) to investigate the mysterious death of her father. A noted scientist and expert cheese maker, John Hay Forrest has apparently died in a car crash, but Juliet believes that he was murdered. Rigby is immediately smitten by Juliet and agrees to help.

His investigation involves interacting with characters played by Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Ava Gardner and Burt Lancaster among many others from a host of classic noir films. The sleuthing leads Rigby to two lists of names labelled "Friends of Carlotta" and "Enemies of Carlotta", and an evil plot that is costing the lives of many. The mystery involves a cruise ship filled with passengers, a remote island, a new weapon of mass destruction, and remnants of the Nazi regime hoping to reclaim past glories.

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is more of an editing workshop than a serious movie. Inserting Martin into classic scenes from noir films including Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, The Postman Always Rings Twice and Dark Passage maintains a decent amount of interest, but it's all unfortunately at the expense of any absorption in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid itself. The movie settles into a series of virtual interactions with stars from the past, and on its own, generates no momentum.

A story that quickly reaches for the absurd and then purposefully strides towards the inane does not help. A smelly cheese-as-a-weapon narrative boorishly announces itself as a sacrificial lamb at the altar of the editing on display.

Martin and Rachel Ward are likable as a bumbling couple, and both over-act with the enthusiasm of stars who do not need to take the project all that seriously. The script gives them a few, but not many, good moments. Juliet is an expert at a bullet-sucking and Rigby is brilliant at always getting shot in the same spot on his arm, and both jokes run out of steam in a hurry. There are at least as many crass moments as clever ones, an unfortunate failing of the script co-written by Martin and director Carl Reiner.

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is a good idea with average execution, a case of a flawed modern film mostly serving to highlight the enduring impact and star power of the classics.

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