The Big Fix Film Review

Director: Jeremy Kagan
Year: 1978
Rating: 6.5

By 1978 tough old-fashioned private detectives in trench coats and fedoras like Sam Spades and Philip Marlowe felt out of place. They had passed on to a new generation that had cats and kids to worry about. Were no longer knights fighting for justice no matter the cost. They were products of the 1960s trying to make enough money to pay alimony and the rent. Noir didn't fit in with the bland 1970s - and so instead you had TV detectives like Rockford living in a trailer or Art Carney in The Late Show huffing and puffing as he climbed stairs. Altman turned it all upside down with his Marlowe in The Long Goodbye with a nonchalant Elliot Gould. The best of the films took us back in time - Chinatown and Mitchum in Farewell. My Lovely. When Mitchum brought his detective into the present in The Big Sleep it didn't work.

Moses Wine probably should have been working in social services or as a manager of a small convenience store, but he fell into being a private eye by accident and stuck to it. Most of his cases are divorce and handing out subpoenas. He lives in a shambles of an apartment and is always late with his child support payments. In the 1960s he was a radical agitator full of ideals and hopes. By now he has turned cynical and realistic. The film is saying goodbye to the 60's. It all turned to shit, nothing changed, Nixon was elected twice, all the radicals became establishment. It is the way of the world.

Richard Dreyfuss who plays Wine was at the top of his game after Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Goodbye Girl. Kind of a nebbish character, small of stature, not someone you would normally pick to be a film star. Or a detective. But he could pull you in with his acting and he does here. Wine is to all eyes basically a loser in a corporate world, but Dreyfuss makes him extremely likable. He has an ex-wife (Bonnie Bedelia) who is in a relationship with a New Age guru (Ron Rifkin) and two young boys. He is a smart-ass with a quick quip for everything. He goes through the entire film with a cast on his hand and depending on who asks him how he got it, he has a different make-believe answer. At the end, we find out the real reason.

But as in many traditional private eye stories, it begins with a woman walking into his office. In this case his home since he seems to have no office. A woman he can't say no to plus he needs to pay his wife. It is an old girlfriend from the 60s. They radicalized together, protested, joined anti-war and civil rights groups. Then she disappeared from his life. Lila played by Susan Anspach. He still has a thing for her and suggests that they put on a Buffalo Springfield record and have sex. Nice choice of music. Stills, Young and Furay can't be beat. But she has gone establishment and is working for a conservative politician running for office.

They want to hire him for a job. The politician's manager (a young John Lithgow) asks him to find Eppis (a young F. Murray Abraham) a radical agitator from the 1960s wanted by the police who has gone underground for years. No trace of him. Eppis has handed out flyers saying he supports the politician. This will hurt him in Orange County. Find him, stop him. Wine doesn't really want to, but he can't say no to the $150 upfront. He begins with the flyer and works from there. Sometimes with Lila, sometime with his two boys, sometimes with this ornery mother who is still a radical. It takes a serious turn halfway through before it becomes a real detective film and he takes the pencil out of his gun barrel. Professional killers make an appearance. And quite honestly, the narrative gets murky and confusing and I didn't really get it entirely. It falls apart under any scrutiny or seems less than you expected. But getting there is the fun - through old folk's centers and community poker palaces, through the dissolution of ideals from the 1960s in his beat-up yellow Volkswagen. Directed by Jeremy Kagan (The Chosen) based on a series of books by Roger Simon.