South Beach

A good, committed cast is the main real reason to stick with it. Fred Williamson (doing his best Mike Hammer impersonation) and Peter Fonda were an amusing duo. Gary Busey shows up every now and again. Being loony. The fun interactions make up for the messy plot, clunky action and odd tone. It's a strange beast, but decent enough for a cheap, straight-to-video fare.

Sleazy dialogues, busy twists upon twists, women falling head over heals and noir shades in the Miami sun and neon nightlife. It's comedic, but when it tries to be serious it can be unintentionally humorous. Especially the threatening phone calls from a crazy nut job harassing a sex hotline. Whose unhealthy obsession with one lady (Vanity). After one of her work colleagues is killed, she seeks help from her ex-husband, former NFL player now private investigator (Fred Williamson). Things then get a lot more complicated. It's obvious who was making the phone calls, even just going by their voice. But this job doesn't wrap up as easy.

This is an interesting film, in the sense it is different. But also, it's a WTF film, with some real WTF moments. It's a film, you wonder what the story is, or where the hell it's going. The film seems to have a few stories. One scene I thought was entirely pathetic, was the robbery scene with Williamson's Mum in a wheelchair. Her acting, response, and reacting was over the top. Vanity, playing a sex operator is getting bad calls, and why is ex PI Busey taking a holiday for a few weeks. The movie is cut and chopped, has bad editing, joining those really B grade views. Forster is solid as a detective friend of Williamson, but it's Peter Fonda who's excellent here as bartender and close friend. Even Stella Stevens makes an a..e of herself in this. Plus, we have a nasty Silva in a cameo role, and also a very pi..ed off Sam Jones near the end. Even the ending song is out of whack for this. Great VHS cover. Don't be fooled. Shoddy boys, Shoddy.

"South Beach" is a film noir film about two ex-football players turned private eyes: Fred Williamson plays Mack Derringer, a smooth yet sloppy guy who likes to use a big gun to take out the trash; and Gary Busey is Lenny, Derringer's partner who likes to walk on the wild side. Together, when not solving cases in Miami, they play golf on the sunny Florida countryside. Well, that's basically one half of the film. But the other half is a very confusing mystery that involves the sultry Vanity who hires our heroes on a case for her. They wind up battling guys like Sam Jones and Henry Silva. This is a messy film, with not a lot of character development. One part of the movie, Peter Fonda shows up, for unknown reasons, to help Busey and Williamson. No, this is not a "Miami Vice" clone, because "M.V." has more logic and sense, and more organized characterization. Avoid this film if you're in the mood for an intelligent film. I don't know why I watched "South Beach". I was flipping through TV one night and I ran into this flick on TNT. I decided to watch it, and this show gave me a headache. What an idiot I am!

If your flipping through your TV one night, this is not all that bad. Plot is incoherent. For example Williamson characters behavior at the end of the film is inconceivable, (I won't give anything away). It is just a goofy movie, where everyone concerned looks like they were having a good time. Robert Forster is really good, He adds some real acting in the film, no wonder Quentin Tarrentino picked him for Jackie Brown. Kudos to Fred Williamson, for letting Gary Busey get the better of him in a fight. Also Williamson is unintentionally hilarious in this film, walking around with a cigar in his mouth, thinking we are supposed to think that is cool. Maybe one day, you will start watching this movie,enjoy it for what it is worth, and remember that some guy on the IMDb data base wrote about it. Just don't go looking for this movie, your better off catching it by accident.

i don't know what they were thinking.by they,i mean anybody even remotely connected to this disaster.i've seen so bad movies,i've seen so really bad movies,and then there's this.but i will say one thing.whoever wrote the script has manged to put what could possibly the most inane dialogue over written,onto the screen.there is nothing good about this movie,either from a technical standpoint or any other standpoint.whoever allowed it to be made and then released should have been fired immediately.there are a few fairly well known names in this movie.actually i hesitate to use the word movie.it's more like a collection of random scenes that have no relation to another and make less than 0 sense.anyway,i fail to see why anyone with any dignity would appear in this.i got it really cheap,and i still got ripped of.even if i had gotten this movie for free,i would still have been ripped off.this is an absoluter 0/10