Hey, gang!
Yes, I like to imagine there's a gang of you who check this
blog every few months to see if I've posted anything, and this fiscal quarter,
you're in luck!
Just like last year (scroll way, way down -- oh wait, that
was my last post on this blog, so it's right below this one!) I was cajoled by
Facebook wag Philip Tatler IV into participating in something called the White Elephant Blogathon. The way it works, some doofus, probably a film blogger,
selects some offbeat piece of readily available cinematic detritus and puts it
in the pot, Philip "randomly" assigns each film to a different film
critic/doofus, and we end up with this. I am actually honored to be among the
fine writers invited to participate the past two years. Last year, I was
assigned Can't Stop the Music, and if there was ever a film that matched that
We-Called-Him-Bruce Jenner-starring effort in its quintessential 1980s-ness,
it's the film I was assigned this year, Number One with a Bullet.
How 1980s is the 1987 buddy cop action comedy? I've compiled
a list, because it's easier than writing:
-Stars Billy Dee Williams
-Stars Robert Carradine
-They play detective partners who bend the rules to get the
job done.
-Was originally supposed to star Jim Belushi, er, ahem,
"James Belushi" in Carradine's
role. James settled for a screenwriting credit.
-Produced by Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan for Cannon Films
-Co-stars Valerie Bertinelli
-Co-stars an aging Peter Graves
-Co-stars the eternally youthful Doris Roberts
-Jesus, that quintessentially 1980s synth & heavy metal
guitar score by Alf Clausen, who also scored the TV shows Moonlighting and Alf
-Detective Hazeltine (Williams) moonlights as a jazz
trumpeter
-Features a scene at a mud-wrestling establishment
-Features two actors, Jon Gries and Mykelti Williamson,
whose careers I did not become aware of until later
Full disclosure, I had never heard of this film before it
was assigned to me, and while watching it, I assumed it was a quickie ripoff of
Lethal Weapon, what with Williams' more level-headed Hazeltine (a lot more
suave than Danny Glover's Murtaugh) offset by Carradine's dangerously
off-balance Barzak (a more fun version Mel Gibson's suicidal Riggs). It was
only when I looked on IMDB after watching it that I realized Number One was
actually released earlier in 1987 than Lethal Weapon. So it's not a Lethal
Weapon ripoff, presumably. Just a zeitgeist type thing, I guess.
Last year when I did this, I wasn't particularly thrilled to
review Can't Stop the Music, but I did find a decent amount of interesting
trivia about the movie from various online sources. That helped spice things
up. Number One seems to be pretty much a forgotten film, and aside from its
questionable provenance (i.e. Cannon), I'm not sure why that's the case. I'm
pretty sure I'll remember it forever now, for better or worse.
The mechanics of the haphazard, worked-over detective plot
seem pretty inconsequential, though. They are renegade cops, always causing as
much trouble for their beleaguered chief (Graves) as they do for the criminals.
Barzak, whom they call "Berserk" on the streets, is mentally
unstable, and is convinced that the mayor's best buddy, millionaire businessman
DeCosta (Barry Sattels) is the kingpin behind the local trade in black tar and
China white, which I believe means heroin. Barzak stakes out DeCosta's house
nightly, which we learn caused the dissolution of his marriage to Teresa
(Bertinelli), with whom he's still in love. Barzak and Hazeltine are assigned
to protect a hitman-turned-witness, which they do badly. They eventually track
down the man responsible, Pogue (Michael Goodwin) whom they also allow to be
murdered by DeCosta before he can give them any information. After allowing a
few more potential witnesses to be murdered, they realize there's a mole within
the department.
None of that effectively expresses the movie's entertainment
value. The action is spatially coherent, in the now-outdated style of the day,
and -- including a helicopter-prop plane chase and a car/truck chase and
shootout amid some heavy construction equipment -- looks pretty good for what
was probably a modest budget.
But if you're going to watch the film, you're going to watch
it for ridiculous character details and would-be witty banter. The plot exists
mainly as a way for these two absurd characters to reflexively riff on cop
movie and TV show tropes. Much is made of the efficacy of shouting
"Freeze!" at suspects, for example. The movie isn't as slick as
Lethal Weapon, but its attempts at humor hit the mark more often, and when they
miss, at least they miss broadly.
You may be coming to the conclusion that I actually kind of
liked this movie, and that's accurate. While Carradine and Williams have never
had the kind of career success one might have expected based on the size of
their biggest hits, they are good actors, particularly Carradine.
Director Jack Smight also once seemed destined for bigger
things. directing Paul Newman in Harper back in 1966, for example. His 1970
James Caan-starring adaptation of John Updike's Rabbit, Run was considered a massive
flop, which probably set his career back some. When he returned to feature film
work in the late '70s, it was on less high end stuff like Airport '75, Fast
Break starring Gabe Kaplan, and one of my many childhood favorite
post-apocalyptic movies, Damnation Alley. This project fits in with those, more
than those earlier, hoity-toity literary adaptations.
Carradine has had an interesting career, Perhaps he'll
always be remembered as Lewis from Revenge of the Nerds, but cinephiles
appreciate his work in films like Walter Hill's The Long Riders and Sam
Fuller's The Big Red One. People who understand his range know that playing the
tough, ruthless, mentally unstable Barzak was not such a stretch for him,
though I imagine it was a challenge to make the character feel as full-fleshed
as Carradine does. We may never understand his strained, awkward relationship
with his nagging mother (Roberts), his stalker-y but still neglectful passion
for his way too patient ex-wife Teresa, or his insane nearly unspoken ardor for
Hazeltine, but perhaps most importantly, we believe what he proclaims about
himself: He fucking loves being a cop.
I was tempted to nickname this movie Jazzbo and Cockblocker,
because Barzak's m.o. is to interrupt Hazeltine when he's working his game on
the ladies -- which naturally includes plenty of jazz trumpeting -- and blow
the deal for him. At one point, Barzak actually calls Hazeltine's date on the
bar phone pretending to be Hazeltine's gay lover. She returns to their table
long enough to shout "You faggot!" at Hazeltine before storming off.
It is a pretty startling moment, watching in 2015, but it does jibe with how I
remember the '80s. Hazeltine gets back at him by calling his mom to tell her
when Barzak will be in town, and by insulting his guitar-playing and singing.
(Barzak sometimes brings an acoustic guitar along to accompany interrogations.)
Of course, Barzak's sexuality is further called into
question by his questionable decision to stake out a drug buy at a church fair
while in drag, reading a copy of something called The Sensuous Woman to further
sell the transparent ruse. I was surprised and confused by this police tactic,
and seriously befuddled when one of the drug buyers shows up in drag, too, for
no reason I could discern. except for that it leads to a comic chase that winds
up at the most desultory bingo game ever captured on film, where the priest
calling the game pleads with Barzak and his quarry, (perhaps inaccurately)
identified in the credits as "Transvestite" (John Durbin),
"Ladies, please! This is a house of God!" The crook responds by
grabbing the priest and threatening to shoot him. Barzak then does this
remarkably Riggs-like thing where he convinces "Transvestite" that
he's the one cop so crazy he might shoot everyone in the church if the
situation doesn't de-escalate fast, and the bad guy lays down his weapon with a
convincingly bemused chuckle. For Barzak's part, hey, he fucking loves being a
cop!
It all made a bit more sense when I saw that -- along with
Belushi, of course, and Gail Morgan Hickman, who also worked on The Enforcer
(Clint Eastwood), Murphy's Law (Charles Bronson), and The Big Score (Fred
Williamson) -- two Saturday Night Live writers, Andrew Kurtzman and Rob Riley,
were credited on the script. It has a kind of loose, semi-improvised comedy
vibe to it, without ever lapsing into outright parody or farce.
I can forgive the movie's political incorrectness, including
its cavalier attitude regarding the rights of suspected criminals, because it's
a product of its time. Or maybe just because I enjoy Carradine's offbeat
performance and find it all fairly benign, silly, and amusing. I like to think
of Golan-Globus worrying about what they would call the sequel if the movie was
a hit. I'm not angry at whatever eccentric individual picked this title, is what I'm saying.
