One Shoe Makes It Murder
                  
Director: William Hale
Year: 1982
Rating: 5.0
By this time Robert Mitchum was as much monolith as man. His face carved in stone and set in place. If he tried to smile it would crack. But he still manages to take up space and have presence in the same way as a John Wayne or Gary Cooper did when they got older.  He was still making good films like The Friends of Eddie Coyle, The Yakuza, Farewell, My Lovely and he was soon to play Pugs in The Winds of War. His one neutral expression was all he needed. Here he plays a character that is an echo of Philip Marlowe, a character he had played twice in the 1970's. Shillman is basically Marlowe a little older, a little slower, a little more beaten by the world, a little more cynical, a little more desperate but just as determined to follow through to the end of the case. This is a TV production and it generally plays like one but with a good cast. The dead giveaway that it is a TV movie is "And guest starring Howard Hesseman". Easy work for Mitchum I expect though he is in every scene.



Shillman is an ex-cop who tried to kill himself when he found his wife with another man. And then took to the bottle. So it comes as a surprise to him when he gets offered a job by a wealthy casino owner (Mel Ferrer) in Lake Tahoe. He wants Shillman to find his missing wife. And pays him $10,000 to do so and as a bonus he throws in Angie Dickinson as a play thing. She is a working girl and he is a derelict detective. How could they not fall in love. He traces the wife easily - she says she talks to her husband every day - he leaves her apartment only to see her falling from her balcony. But one of her shoes is still in the apartment, the other with her. The cop says that makes it murder in my book, Now Shillman is looking for a killer and it takes him layer by layer into a seamy past of pimps and prostitutes.




There is a decent plot in there somewhere but it comes too easily - there is no grit, no real noir, no real betrayals - it needed more saxophones and shadows and self-doubt. Angie sticks with him and she is really good in this as an older woman in a young girl's game but she has her past as well.