Hustle
Director: Robert Aldrich
Year: 1975
Rating: 6.0
Director Robert Aldrich who had made a comeback of sorts with Burt Reynolds
the previous year with The Longest Yard partners up with Reynolds again in
this crime film that zigs and zags all over the place like a bee searching
for nectar. To some degree that makes it interesting as it becomes more than
just a cop gets bad guys film but it also is frustrating at times because
you sort of want them to just get on with it. But Aldrich delves into relationships
and characters more than your basic cop film - is this a love story with a
crime in the background or a crime film with a love story to bolster it. By
the end you might decide the former. It is also very cynical as everyone takes
the corrupt state of things as normal except one man - not the cops - and
he is crazy.
Reynolds plays Gaines a tough cop who one senses has seen it all - nothing
surprises him except his own feelings towards his girlfriend (the stunning
Catherine Deneuve) who is a high class prostitute and who indulges in phone
sex for $100 a call in front of Gaines. The film spends a lot of time with
their intimacy and with Gaines finding her profession more and more difficult
to deal with emotionally.
A young girl is found dead on the beach full of semen and barbiturates.
Her death is ruled a suicide and Gaines is fine with that. But his partner
(an excellent Paul Winfield) thinks they should look into it a bit closer
but Gaines demurs and you are never sure if that is because the man who may
be behind it (Eddie Albert) is also one of his girlfriend's best customers.
I love the way Albert went from almost always being a good regular guy in
films and the TV series Green Acres to almost always playing a stuffy bad
guy by the 1970's. But the father (Ben Johnson in a wonderfully angry performance)
refuses to believe his daughter took her own life and as evidence is supplied
to him that she was living on the sleazy side of life - goes more and more
psychotic.
It makes for a difficult film to pigeon hold and rarely goes where you expect
it to, but never quite satisfies. Reynolds is fine as the cop but seems out
of place as the lover of a French sophisticated high class hooker who takes
him to films like A Man and a Woman. The ending also feels like it was simply
thrown in for cynical cinematic reasons. Appearing also in smaller parts are
Ernest Borgnine, Jack Carter, Eileen Brennan Catherine Bach.
