BEFORE: Can I do this? Can I cut from a serious film about African dictator Idi Amin to a silly 80's police comedy? I mean, I know I can, but should I? I can tell myself that the linking makes it OK, because Forest Whitaker carries over. But I still feel like I'm ricocheting all over the place, with no consistency in subject matter. I'll just console myself that crime's running through everything, whether that's the crime of being dishonest ("Magic in the Moonlight", "The Importance of Being Earnest") to the crimes of treason ("The Conspirator"), art theft ("Trance") and political wrongdoing/genocide ("The Last King of Scotland"). Whatever helps me sleep at night, right?
This gets me to Richard Dreyfuss films, which get me to Peter Falk films, which get me to Jack Lemmon films, and then back to sci-fi before my Comic-Con break. The plan will all make some kind of sense in about 2 1/2 weeks.
THE PLOT: Two cops have to observe a woman. One of them falls in love with her.
AFTER: The film opens with a man breaking out of prison - sure, like that happens in the news all the time. But federal agents don't break out the bloodhounds or follow the crime wave he creates as he moves across the country, they instead choose to get local police to stake out places he might turn up, like the homes of ex-girlfriends. Because they don't head north across the border to Canada, no matter how close they are - instead they drive across big states like Montana if they think they might get laid. Are you paying attention, upstate New York cops?
(I mean, really, there are three choices if you bust out of prison so close to Canada - 1) Head to Canada, simple but effective. 2) Do the complete opposite, and head south toward Mexico. If you can't make it to Mexico, there are plenty of places to hide in rural Pennsylvania, and maybe everyone will just assume you went the other direction. 3) Stay right where you are, find a little cabin or something a few miles from the prison, because nobody would expect that. Wait a month, change your whole look and then walk (don't run) out of town.)
Above all, if you're on the lam, don't call attention to yourself. That includes looking up old girlfriends - but the convict in question here has no choice, because he's got money stashed at his ex-lover's house. It seems like it would be relatively easy for him to get it, because the local cops are spending much more time pranking each other (the day team pranks the night team, and vice versa) and also romancing the subject they're supposed to be watching.
To be fair, the guy's just broken up with his girlfriend (wife?) and he's having trouble sleeping during the day - the running gag of noisy wood chippers and neighbors with motorcycles breaks the comedy rule of things being funny in threes, because there are only two examples shown. Someone couldn't think of a third loud thing to annoy him? Wait, I think there was also a garbage truck - never mind.
They put a bug on her phone - which, apparently in the 1980's, could only be done from inside the house. Either spy technology was really poor back then, or else this was just a narrative cheat to get one close to her, where he can see how attractive she is. So that's a NITPICK POINT, because I think you can tap someone's phone line from the telephone pole or the junction box, right? Anyway, once our man forms a connection, the slippery slope of reasoning goes that his job is to watch her house, but now he's just doing it from the inside.
Jeez, it's just like "In the Cut" - do cops really see their casework as one big dating service? This seems quite unprofessional. But I guess police run into a lot of different people in the course of a day, and I could see her going for a man in uniform, except he's not in uniform. She just thinks he's a nice guy who works for the phone company, but in the real world, a woman calling someone "nice" is not great news for the relationship - it means she's put him in the friend zone while she looks for another bad boy to date.
While I'm at it, another NITPICK POINT: Why didn't the FBI have enough agents to do their own stakeouts? They were only watching 6 locations, even with two agents per shift at each location, that's only 24 people. There was no reason at all for them to get the local police involved. Plus they probably would have handled things a bit more professionally.
Also starring Richard Dreyfuss (last seen in "Postcards From the Edge"), Emilio Estevez (last seen in "Repo Man"), Madeleine Stowe (last seen in "China Moon"), Aidan Quinn (last seen in "The Prince and the Pauper"), Dan Lauria, Ian Tracey, Earl Billings, with cameos from Don Davis, Elizabeth Bracco.
RATING: 4 out of 10 Playboy centerfolds
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