Hickey & Boggs

A real treat. Cosby is straight as an arrow. Reminds me of Lee Marvin, here. Culp uses very simple but arresting technique in this directorial debut. His style may look limited but it is hard to imagine a film edited and paced in such a style today except maybe Soderberg's THE LIMEY. This is a key film in the PI genre. It should be seen. Very intelligent, very enjoyable and marvelously put together. It has the pitfalls of the era, the 'heavies' are like lumbering monsters and there is probably one chilli dog too many. But these are quibbles. It's a pity Cosby wasn't in more movies like this. And a damn shame that Culp never picked up the camera again. 8/10

The guys from I, Spy are back and "it" hits the fan. Hickey and Boggs are two long in the tooth private investigators on their last legs, physically and financially. They get a case that seems like a good deal to make a few bucks. Then they uncover some things that the really, really bad guys do not want uncovered. The more the bad guys try to get them off the case the harder they press. Then one of their families is murdered as a warning and they go methodically ballistic. Now they are looking not for information but for some people to kill. Also featured is Bill Hickman, one of Hollywood's most sought after stunt drivers and the driver of the black Charger in "Bullitt." You never saw Bill Cosby portray a quiet family man turned into a methodical, cold blooded killer. Don't miss a chance to see it.

Robert Culp directed this tough '70s crime flick about two down on thier luck private investigators in LA. Culp and Cosby are miles away from the characters they played in I SPY, but the chemistry is still their. Another note - several prominent actors make early appearances in this film - James Woods, and Michael Moriarty. Vincent Gardenia appears in the cliche role of the put upon, aggravated police contact. Good news - this film is now available on DVD. The company releasing it on DVD is AIP films. Quality of the transfer is mediocre, but it's still worth it to see this underrated film again.

Unknown or forgotten, and never released on video, this unexpectedly gritty film from Robert Culp (who also directed) and Bill Cosby is light years away from their popular I Spy series. As two low-end private eyes, neither has ever been more effective on screen before. An interesting, atypical contrast of styles in their acting; Cosby plays it humorless, (in a realistic, lived-in fashion, not a tough guy caricature) while Culp is alternates several nice modes for his character.

The earliest directorial effort from Walter Hill stands among the best of his career (it would make a fine double bill with his classic THE DRIVER), and also among the best of the rich era of 1970's crime dramas. It was released by United Artists and the rights-holders would do us a favor to release it for sale. It has some class-A action scenes and two terrific central performances. Hopefully will soon see the light of day again and gain some of the reputation it so deserves.

Action and suspense films from the early 1970s have a distinctive period flavor to them. The surprisingly effective Hickey and Boggs – co-star Robert Culp's sole directorial effort – embodies that disillusioned and dissolute era of movie making. The rough and choppy editing, the oddly cropped shots keep the viewer on edge; so do the less than pristine cinematography and the cacophonous sound track, with dialogue overlaid on a constant, dull background roar of ambient noise. Often this proved to be a recipe for pretentious but empty disasters and cynical exploitation films; here, it all works to keep the level of unease – of menace – uncomfortably high.

Bill Cosby and Robert Culp play the title characters, a couple of down-on-their-luck Los Angeles private investigators. (Many moviegoers of the era apparently expected a big-screen reprise of their successful pairing in the television spoof of the 1960s, I Spy; how wrong they were.) They are engaged to find a missing woman by one of those creepily effete characters who, since Peter Lorre's Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon, exist only to set up private eyes in the movies. And as they go about their sleuthing, they uncover a trail of brutally murdered corpses, a situation which does not endear them to the police. They come to learn that the woman they're tracking holds the take from a robbery of the Federal Reserve Bank in Pittsburgh some years before; they've been hired as finger men by one of a number of murky but vicious groups seeking to retrieve the cash.

The movie forgoes crisp, clockwork plotting for a generalized miasma of corruption, duplicity and malaise. There are allusions to the turbulent politics of the times in the involvement of black militants and Chicano radicals; there are whiffs, too, of the specter of newly hatched sexualities that threaten the status quo. At the scene of one murder, they find crushed amyl nitrite poppers and gay porn, while the jaded oldster who engages them suns himself on a towel sited suspiciously close to a set of swings where young children are cavorting; for that matter Culp, in his cups and a masochistic, self-pitying mood, watches his ex-wife flaunt herself in a strip club to be ogled by drunken strangers.

The malaise, of course, becomes murderous in Walter Hill's very violent screenplay, touching Cosby's character (his estranged wife ends up tortured to death). Still, the two dead-end dicks soldier on, more though one another's goading than from any code or commitment – they're both on the verge of giving up and sliding down into the vortex of lust, avarice and revenge that has become their world (and by extension, THE world). Describing Hickey and Boggs makes it sound like the ultimate downer; it is, but it's an uncommonly compelling piece of film making, and one that has pretty much fallen through the cracks of movie history.