movie review: Loose Cannons

I can't remember the last time I saw a movie with so many missteps as the justifiably forgotten 80s buddy movie Loose Cannons. In a way, the movie's first big mistake occurs before it was even made; Richard Christian Matheson and his father, the great Richard Matheson, Sr., have written some of the best horror and science fiction of the past several decades, but that doesn't mean everything they churn out is gold, and I'm not sure what made them think their experience writing about starships, vampires, and shrinking men made them think they were qualified to write an action-comedy cop movie. Come to think of it, when you thrive as a writer of great imagination, why bother trying your hand at stale Hollywood formula? Maybe they lost a bet.

In any case, the movie is all kinds of wrong from the very first scene. The film starts out with a group of characters trying to navigate a boat through an eerie, ominous fog. "This is scary!" one of the characters whines. Note to writers: If you have to be that explicit in telling your viewers how to feel about a scene, you may be in trouble.

The characters bicker in a manner that makes you instantly dislike them. They are supposed to be sympathetic, but by the time they encounter a group of bad guys on a yacht, you're already hoping the bad guys will kill them all, just to end the inane dialogue -- and this is still the prologue of the film!

We are then introduced to our main characters. First up is MacArthur "Mac" Stern, played by Gene Hackman, who brings talent to a tired role. Mac is a plain-clothes vice cop introduced in a painfully unfunny scene in which he refuses to cite a couple for disturbing the peace when their insanely loud love-making disturbs the entire neighborhood. Instead, he oddly poses as a public health inspector and gives the guy a hard time for not wearing a condom. Yeah. The scene is as bad as it sounds.

Then there's Ellis Fielding, played by Dan Aykroyd. He's been living in a monastery for months, and the foreshadowing begins with the revelation that the monastery doubles as a mental health institution. There's talk about Ellis returning to police work after a hiatus of months living with the monks. Will Ellis's mysterious mental illness eventually result in wackiness?

After the obligatory "meet your new partner" scene (which actually does contain that exact phrase) we get to know Ellis and Mac better. There's a lot of dialogue about how Mac is a maverick cop, and over the course of the film, we'll realize that the only real way we know he's a maverick cop is because people keep talking about how "crazy" he is. This point is worth emphasizing: We never really see him act crazy or mavericky, we're just told to accept that's how he is because the characters say so. Also because every cop film needs a maverick cop, so the writers feel that if we're told that's what Mac is, maybe we'll start to believe it. Actually, I have to amend this line of complaint, because the movie, significantly, provides one example of Mac's "maverick" attitude. I'll get back to this.

Ellis, meanwhile, turns out to be a forensics genius, and in one of his first scenes, he takes one look at a crime scene and reconstructs exactly how the crime went down -- and then, in a moment worthy of Sherlock Holmes, also explains how easily missed details led him to his conclusions. It's a well-written scene, and Aykroyd shines as the brilliant detective, so naturally, the film never again examines this aspect of the character. This is by far the best aspect of the film, but after this one shining moment, the film completely abandons, and seems to more or less forget, Aykroyd's character trait as a genius. What kind of incompetent screenwriting is that?

The character trait that the movie is really interested in exploring is that Ellis, it turns out, has multiple personality disorder. This has great comic potential, especially at the hands of a talented actor. Aykroyd is a talented actor. But you'd never be able to tell from this movie. In a stroke of laziness, the writers decided that instead of giving Ellis some actually interesting personalities, they would have him do broad caricatures of TV and movie characters. This isn't an original screenplay, it's more of a game of "spot the pop culture reference." It comes across as the writers' cheap excuse to pepper the film with dialogue from other movies, in lieu of writing their own.

Furthermore, what little humor the audience can find in watching Aykroyd act like Captain Kirk, the Cowardly Lion, and such, is defused even further by Ellis's backstory, which is so tragic that every moment of Aykroyd's silliness is poisoned with sorrow. It seems that Ellis used to work undercover in narcotics, until his cover was blown. Drug lords captured him and tortured him for days -- and that's when his multiple personalities emerged.

Now, why, in God's name, would the Mathesons provide Ellis with such a disturbing, cringe-inducing back-story -- in a comedy? What were they thinking? "Hey, for a comedy, this movie sucks pretty bad, but Ellis still might get some laughs. How can we make his comical scenes a lot more funny? Ah, we know -- let's constantly remind our viewers that he's had a mental breakdown brought on by brutal torture!"

The case Ellis and Mac are partnered for is equally mishandled. The proverbial MacGuffin of the film is a highly valuable film canister. It contains a "Nazi porno film starring Adolf Hitler," an idea equally absurd (but not comically absurd) and offensive. The Nazi porno, we are told, has great historical value (for putting Hitler in a new light) and also great political value, as it contains footage that proves that current German politician Von Metz (Robert Proskey) was once a member of the Nazi party, and in fact, a member of Hitler's inner circle.

O.K., first of all, why Nazis? Hey, I think they're a valid subject for cinematic stories, even action movies and comedies (see Benigni, Chaplin, Spielberg, etc.). But the subject is so uncomfortable, why use them as bad guys if there's no reason for it? The film could have just as easily said, "hey, this guy Metz was in the inner circle of a mafia boss/ corrupt politician/ convicted murderer, and the footage in this film canister proves it!" But no, the Mathesons decide to go with Nazis.

Second of all, why porno? Honestly, there is simply, unequivocally, no reason to make the secret film a porno, other than a cheap attempt to make the subject matter more risque. It's an awkward detail that adds absolutely nothing of value to the film.

Third of all, look at the character whose job it is to explain the Nazi porno film's significance. He's Harry "the Hippo" Gutterman, played by the gifted comic actor Dom DeLouise. Aside from exposition, DeLouise is given nothing to do. He's certainly not permitted to be funny. All he does is declare himself as a murder witness and ask for police protection, so he can spend the entire film making the same two complaints over and over again: "You call this police protection?" and "You guys are crazy!" It's not a running gag, it's a broken record.

I said I'd get back to my complaint about Mac's "maverick" attitude, so here it is: About midway through the film, the FBI shows up. They're suddenly interested in the case, but Mac doesn't want to hand over the film or his witness. The FBI agent played by Ronny Cox admittedly does come across as a little sleazy, so Mac develops an instant disliking toward him and refuses to cooperate with the feds. Now, Ellis, Harry, and Mac have to run not only from the neo-Nazis who want to destroy the film, but also from the feds who want to confiscate it. But wait a minute. Why is any of this happening? Why doesn't Mac cooperate with the FBI? Is it just because Cox rubs him the wrong way, or does he suspect a cover-up? What possible motivation could the FBI have in covering up a foreign politician's involvement in the Nazi party? None of this is ever explained. At least we now start to understand why the movie went to so much trouble to describe Mac as a maverick: it serves as the only explanation of why his character would refuse to cooperate with a federal investigation.

I've tried to illustrate how truly terrible this film is, but perhaps the best illustration is how the movie screws up its own punchline.

"You know why we make such good partners?" Ellis says at the end. "Because you're crazier than I am!"

"I knew that!" Mac chimes in. End of scene, end of movie.

Oh, how many ways can you screw up the delivery of one line? First of all, Mac has been described as "crazy" so many times that one more repetition of the line doesn't carry any punch to it at all. Second of all, the line is even less funny because, as I've observed, it's just not true. Mac never acts crazy, so why the heck does everyone keep saying that he does? Third of all (and I could list more reasons, but I'll stop at 3, for brevity's sake), the punchline is "you're crazier than I am." That's the punchline. It's not a funny punchline, it's flawed, it's tired, it's ineffective, but that's obviously, inarguably, the punchline. What's with the pointless "I knew that" comment? Anyone with any sense of comedy knows that you stop after the punchline. That's how the line gets its punch. You don't end a comical storyline with "to get to the other side -- that's why the chicken crosses the road!" or "you didn't come here to hunt did you -- you came here because you like gettin' it on with a bear!" or "take my wife, please, because I bet you thought I was going to say to take my wife for example, but I guess I fooled you, ha ha!"

How incompetent can you be to write a comedy and not understand how punchlines work? What a sad reflection of the movie as a whole.