Not a great movie by any stretch, but filled with lots of comedy, plenty of action and some great Miami scenery, plus the future Murphy Brown, a wild Rip Taylor lookalike (minus the crazy mustache ant confetti), a former child Broadway star and a delightfully funny valet. I am not much of a Burt Reynolds fan, but he's a complete charmer here as an ex-con seeking revenge for the assassination of his friend (Jose Perez, the one time Puerto Rican child actor who played the young son in the original "South Pacific") and the chase scenes he has with the albino hit man, Dar Robinson, who is not the albino hit man from "Foul Play". Richard Lawson is a delight as the valet to wisecracking George Segal, always making with the sarcasm and stealing every scene he's in. That's definitely the difficult to do with Segal as his boss and a platinum haired Charles Durning in the wackiest wig and Hawaiian shirts.
Being set in Miami, there's a lot of Hispanic characters here, and even though he's on and off in the first 20 minutes, Jose Perez shows a lot of heart as Reynolds' pal who just happens to work for a drug lord. Castulo Guerra and David Reynoso are very good as Durning's rivals, friendly on the surface but completely serious when they hint that Durning will be a dead man if their business dealings go sour. Alec Rocco plays a film director, and Bergen is a reporter, somehow much gentler than Murphy. As for Reynolds, he's no different than he was in many of his other films, but in many of his 1980's films, he was less than charming, something that he has here in abundance.
This is filled with a ton of action, gorgeous location footage and even a little bit of romance. A scene with a deadly scorpion crawling up Reynolds is frightening. Of course it's a reunion of Reynolds and a few of his acting pals, most notably Bergen and Durning. It's difficult to say who the standout is because the entire cast each gets to steal a scene or two. I guess the critics in 1985 were in bad moods or simply anti-Burt, and their bad reviews turned this into a flop. So I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did, and it is one Burt Reynolds film that I'll save to share with friends.
Being set in Miami, there's a lot of Hispanic characters here, and even though he's on and off in the first 20 minutes, Jose Perez shows a lot of heart as Reynolds' pal who just happens to work for a drug lord. Castulo Guerra and David Reynoso are very good as Durning's rivals, friendly on the surface but completely serious when they hint that Durning will be a dead man if their business dealings go sour. Alec Rocco plays a film director, and Bergen is a reporter, somehow much gentler than Murphy. As for Reynolds, he's no different than he was in many of his other films, but in many of his 1980's films, he was less than charming, something that he has here in abundance.
This is filled with a ton of action, gorgeous location footage and even a little bit of romance. A scene with a deadly scorpion crawling up Reynolds is frightening. Of course it's a reunion of Reynolds and a few of his acting pals, most notably Bergen and Durning. It's difficult to say who the standout is because the entire cast each gets to steal a scene or two. I guess the critics in 1985 were in bad moods or simply anti-Burt, and their bad reviews turned this into a flop. So I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did, and it is one Burt Reynolds film that I'll save to share with friends.