In the grand scheme of movie things, there are probably a million movies that will be considered better than Hickey and Boggs, but this almost-missed 1972 crime drama that reunites Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, the two stars of the popular TV series, I Spy, has more than enough golden flecks to justify looking for it on Amazon.
Al Hickey (Cosby) and Frank Boggs (Culp) are two down-on-their-luck private dicks who share the honors of being fired by the LAPD and having very little to fall back upon . Although the plot sounds hopelessly clichéd (the loot from a bloody armored car robbery resurfaces in LA, and a melting-pot of gangster/corporate suits, black revolutionaries, Mexican immigrants, murderous-but-not- brilliant hit-men, and hysterically angry detectives come after the all-but-divorced Hickey and the alcoholic, pole-dancer-addicted Boggs) screenwriter Walter Hill and director Culp make the viewer care about these two lost and lonely working stiffs who used to be proud, but who are now desperately threadbare.
I Spy was light and fluffy. Hickey and Boggs bombed at the box office because viewers were expecting a more of the same, a dramedy, but there's damned little humor in this film. Yet, the performances of and the chemistry between Bill Cosby and Robert Culp are so very believable that the audience is left jittery from the suspense of where and how the "torpedoes" will strike again. On a personal level, Hickey's marriage to the beautiful Rosalind Cash is a shambles, and Boggs has all but given up fighting his addictions to booze, girls, and mid-sixties Ford Thunderbirds.
It's so palpable, so frantic for these men as they try to make a buck, defend themselves from the baddies and the goodies, and get past the professional and personal chaos they have helped to create.
There is an excruciating moment when Hickey's mother-in-law, the always watchable Isabel Sanford, stands on the porch of her daughter's house, the site of the latest "torpedo" attack, and verbally disembowels Cosby--while Cosby's daughter desperately tries to keep her sanity by mowing the lawn--and you can't quite hear Sanford's anguished, angry voice over the highway noise. The look of defeat on Cosby's face is his character writ small.
Meanwhile, Culp sits in a strip club, destroying his liver, and is almost in tears as a dancer with dead eyes flirts with him. Like Cosby, he is alone and vanquished. Even the strippers don't care.
Although the ending is stolidly predictable, the viewer is relieved to see that there is some hope for Al and Frank. There is a lot of shooting, with everyone from the Panther-types to a thoroughly vicious Michael Moriarty either eviscerated or burned to a crisp. They walk off down the beach, slogging through the sand, and, hopefully, they will find a way to repair their lives.
Yeah, Hickey and Boggs is an artsy downer, but, as I said before, there are enough moments of style and substance in this underestimated film noir to make it both watchable and, to the patient viewer, emotionally accessible. There is a line in Hickey and Boggs, after a nasty firefight in the LA Coliseum, where Culp, instead of saying something pithy or sarcastic about the torpedoes, simply fumes, "I gotta get a bigger gun. I can't hit a damned thing."
That's a little gold fleck right there.
Al Hickey (Cosby) and Frank Boggs (Culp) are two down-on-their-luck private dicks who share the honors of being fired by the LAPD and having very little to fall back upon . Although the plot sounds hopelessly clichéd (the loot from a bloody armored car robbery resurfaces in LA, and a melting-pot of gangster/corporate suits, black revolutionaries, Mexican immigrants, murderous-but-not- brilliant hit-men, and hysterically angry detectives come after the all-but-divorced Hickey and the alcoholic, pole-dancer-addicted Boggs) screenwriter Walter Hill and director Culp make the viewer care about these two lost and lonely working stiffs who used to be proud, but who are now desperately threadbare.
I Spy was light and fluffy. Hickey and Boggs bombed at the box office because viewers were expecting a more of the same, a dramedy, but there's damned little humor in this film. Yet, the performances of and the chemistry between Bill Cosby and Robert Culp are so very believable that the audience is left jittery from the suspense of where and how the "torpedoes" will strike again. On a personal level, Hickey's marriage to the beautiful Rosalind Cash is a shambles, and Boggs has all but given up fighting his addictions to booze, girls, and mid-sixties Ford Thunderbirds.
It's so palpable, so frantic for these men as they try to make a buck, defend themselves from the baddies and the goodies, and get past the professional and personal chaos they have helped to create.
There is an excruciating moment when Hickey's mother-in-law, the always watchable Isabel Sanford, stands on the porch of her daughter's house, the site of the latest "torpedo" attack, and verbally disembowels Cosby--while Cosby's daughter desperately tries to keep her sanity by mowing the lawn--and you can't quite hear Sanford's anguished, angry voice over the highway noise. The look of defeat on Cosby's face is his character writ small.
Meanwhile, Culp sits in a strip club, destroying his liver, and is almost in tears as a dancer with dead eyes flirts with him. Like Cosby, he is alone and vanquished. Even the strippers don't care.
Although the ending is stolidly predictable, the viewer is relieved to see that there is some hope for Al and Frank. There is a lot of shooting, with everyone from the Panther-types to a thoroughly vicious Michael Moriarty either eviscerated or burned to a crisp. They walk off down the beach, slogging through the sand, and, hopefully, they will find a way to repair their lives.
Yeah, Hickey and Boggs is an artsy downer, but, as I said before, there are enough moments of style and substance in this underestimated film noir to make it both watchable and, to the patient viewer, emotionally accessible. There is a line in Hickey and Boggs, after a nasty firefight in the LA Coliseum, where Culp, instead of saying something pithy or sarcastic about the torpedoes, simply fumes, "I gotta get a bigger gun. I can't hit a damned thing."
That's a little gold fleck right there.