Thirty years later Paul Newman returns to the private eye genre – and finds the well dry. It’s a Hollywood trope that big stars after decades of employing every artifice in the business decide for artistic reasons to fess up and play their age. But the “tired old man” syndrome here is as much a bust as the story and the characters. Susan Sarandon couldn’t have “femme fatale” written on her face in any bigger letters and only the dumbest viewer would not guess from the outset that she had something to do with the mysterious disappearance of her first husband. It’s no surprise that this is so devoid of anything memorable that it is remembered mostly these days for Oscar-winning Reese Witherspoon getting her kit off.
Worse, despite being second-billed, Gene Hackman hardly appears, no more than topping and tailing the picture. We also have a voice-over that’s not replete with wit but is used to fill us in on bits of the narrative that are either opaque or not obvious enough. And it falls back on the Raymond Chandler gimmick of a man bursting into a room with a gun when the narrative starts to slacken. Except the story here is so slack it’s almost immobile. And there’s just a terrible ongoing joke that everyone thinks (apparently) that Paul Newman has had his pecker shot off, which would explain his general curmudgeonly attitude.
Ex-cop private eye Harry Ross (Paul Newman) is down in Mexico to find the missing daughter Mel Ames (Reese Witherspoon) of old buddy Jack on an illegal sexscapade (she’s a minor) with Jeff (Liev Schreiber). In the process of apprehending her he drops his gun (yep, that’s how good he is at this job) and she picks it up and shoots him. Flash forward a couple of years and Harry’s retired and living in a grace-and-favor apartment supplied by a grateful Jack who is dying of cancer. Harry agrees to come out of retirement to deliver a package for Jack, which obviously contains cash for a blackmail pay-out. Come delivery time, Harry stumbles upon the corpse of another ex-cop, Lester (M. Emmet Walsh), who has continued the search for the missing husband of Jack’s current wife Catherine (Susan Sarandon), a former actress not averse to taking her clothes off onscreen.
Into the equation comes cynical cop Capt Egan (John Spencer) and Verna (Stockard Channing), another old buddy and possibly one-time girlfriend (it’s not clear). Meanwhile, Harry falls for the charms of Catherine since only the dumbest of dumb cops can’t recognize a femme fatale when she falls into his lap. Unfortunately, Jack chooses that moment to have a heart attack and quickly works out from the giveaway of Catherine racing to the rescue wearing Harry’s shirt that he’s been cuckolded.
The trail doesn’t exactly lead to another old buddy, Raymond (James Garner), but he gets involved and another red alert flashes on the screen when we learn that Jack owns a million-dollar house (multi-million dollar equivalent these days) that even in his financially-straitened condition he refuses to sell for the obvious reason – as it takes forever for the audience to discover – that the corpse of the missing husband is buried in the grounds.
Jeff, who’s done a four-year stretch for his sojourn in Mexico with Mel, has worked this out and in conjunction with parole officer Gloria (Margo Martindale) is putting the squeeze on Jack. But he’s pretty miffed with Harry and knocks him out. But he’s also as dumb as the rest of the gang and is hiding out in the unsold million-dollar house. So he’s not hard to track down. And not just by Harry but also by the aforementioned character who bursts through a door with a gun when the narrative goes slack.
So, shucks, eventually we learn what we knew from the outset, that Catherine had her first husband bumped off so she could marry Jack and he was complicit. You might not have worked out that Raymond was somehow involved but what the heck there needs to be some twist in the turgid tale.
Naturally, Harry, being a retired cop and private eye now resigned to the vagaries of life, isn’t particularly concerned with putting away Catherine and in any case, as luck would have it, turns out Verna is still sweet on him so they can walk away into the sunset.
Crikey! And this from triple Oscar-winning writer-director Robert Benton (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967 and Kramer vs Kramer 1979). If it’s intended as a parody of the genre, there ain’t much in the way of laffs and if it’s not then, sorry, that’s the way it’s turned out.
Sure it’s world-weary and all that, and Harry is a sad divorced ex-alcoholic who’s very down on his luck, and while there is some brittle dialog it’s not enough to make up for the sludge of the narrative trek.
Yep, Paul Newman (Harper, 1966) comes across as old and Gene Hackman (The Gypsy Moths, 1969) comes across as old and James Garner (Buddwing, 1966) comes across as old but is that it? Honestly? Worse, Oscar-winning Susan Sarandon comes up short in the femme fatale department. You wouldn’t figure Reese Witherspoon either as a superstar in the making. In fact, the droll Margo Martindale steals the show.
This pretty much put the tin lid on the career of Paul Newman as a top-billed star – and it’s worth pointing out that both Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood in that marquee regard went on longer – as it did on the directing career of Robert Benton.
Must’ve seemed a good idea at the time.
The Magnificent 60s 