Director: Buzz Kulik
Year: 1973
Rating: 6.0
This Burt Reynold's vehicle is filled with some very good scenes and some
interesting off-beat characters but it doesn't really add up to much that
is substantial. The film is a salute to old fashioned private eye films but
it gets all jumbled up and a bit pedestrian in its plotting. The ending could
have come from an an episode of Rockford. But until then I thought it was
pretty solid with Reynolds being his low-key charming tough guy self along
with Dyan Cannon just purring and looking fine - and let's not forget Morris
the Cat who was a big star at the time.
There are some fairly obvious nods to The Big Sleep with McCoy (Reynolds)
being called out to a customer's mansion with grounds as large as Rhode Island
where he meets his client in a freezing room (in The Big Sleep it was a hot
room filled with orchids). He wants McCoy to look into a diamond robbery
and a murder by blowtorch. Later McCoy has to kill a few hours and so seduces
a large breasted woman in a book store - right out of Chandler. He makes
the rounds of his friends to see what he can learn - his cop buddy (Joe Santos
- does he ever play anything but Italian cops?), a mafia Don, poker players,
pool room hustlers and his buddy Springy who has memorized every sports stat
going back to the original marathon in Greece in 490 BC. All lowlife Brooklyn
players. Like all good detectives he gets beaten up, shot at, insulted, chased
and seduces a couple ladies on his pool table where he advises them to use
the side pockets for their feet.
But Reynolds is easy to watch and he has a few very impressive physical stunts
and set pieces. This came right after Fuzz and Deliverance when Reynolds
was in great shape (he takes his shirt off on a few occasions for his female
fans) and before injuries slowed him down. One scene of him running and jumping
from van to van and then later jumping off a wall and catching a branch on
the way down only to crash hard to the ground was tough work. With more of
an effort on the script's ending - it just gets ludicrous as a Dr. Strangelove
type military guy enters the picture - this could have been much better.
But still enjoyable enough.
