I have always been a huge Burt Reynolds fan, I've always admired his humility and his way of engaging with the audience be it as actor or Director.
The film opens to the enchanting tones of Randy Crawford signing Street life, incidentally the film ends on a duet to what closely must resemble the sound of the emasculation of two cats with a blunt knife.
Anyway Sharky is demoted to Vice when 'he' messed up a drug bust. Down in Vice is where we meet the gang who all add wonderful dimensions to this film and each shines in his role, Charles Durning is hilarious he screams with such intensity you really become concerned for his blood pressure.
Just when it looks like Vice might be boring a whole can of worms opens up when they begin to stake out some 'High class' call girls (the stake out is a little long almost in real time), the plot involves a puppet politician and the puppet master played amazingly by the one and only Vittorio Gassman.
Sharky starts to fall for 'Dominoe' (gorgeous but she's gotta give up the cigarettes she sounds like the Bouvier sisters from the Simpsons) one of the 'High Class' call girls, incidentally Burt Fell for another 'High Class' call girl in 'Hustle'.
Burt was very generous with the script he gave some of the best stuff to the supporting cast, in actual fact sometimes through the movie in his quest to build Sharky as the strong silent type the lack of script for himself turned Sharky into the strong boring type. This was very apparent when he was finally with Dominoe at his pad, he was pining around like a 13 year old. He couldn't string two words together he just looked bashful so bashful he almost looked mentally challenged, he did everything bar kicking his heels looking at the floor and saying "Gee golly I ain't never done kissed no girl be fower hu hulk".
In all it's a very entertaining film, it drags a bit here and there, but it always comes back to life and the last 30 minutes are a roller-coaster, watch out for Henry Silva who plays a whacked out hit man, my favorite scene is when he points his gun at Arch and
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