Hustle

Great, underrated film noir, expertly written, master class of the genre. Begs to be rediscovered. If you are a purist of noir, then this is a gift to you, courtesy of Aldrich. There is so much more to Burt Reynolds than people give him credit, and he proves it here. I may be alone in this, but i got the impression the film was lit for black and white and comes off badly in colour - the contrast is too extreme, and ultimately works against the film. Curiously, when i tuned it to b/w it looked incredible - as moody and mean as Aldrich would would have intended. And Deneuve isn't as bad as the critics made out. if you love noir and have a problem with this film, i can't begin to understand why.

Nope, the movie with that amazing stunt mentioned above is "Stick", not "Hustle". "Hustle" is a nice little film, though - a fairly predictable TV cop movie plot, lifted well above the ordinary by some intelligent well-written dialogue and a nice, world-weary performance by Burt Reynolds (honest!).

Around the same time, the director also made "Ulzana's Raid" and "Twilight's Last Gleaming", both of which are deeply critical of the Establishment. True to form, in "Hustle", Reynolds' cynical detective takes some savage swipes at American society. Best line - "Can't you smell the bananas? We're living in f*cking Guatemala. With colour televisions." (The screenwriter also wrote "Save The Tiger" - with a very similar moral).

Well worth watching on late-night telly - NOT worth watching for Catherine Deneuve, who's remarkably wooden in English.

Burt Reynolds really channels a young Marlon Brando in this film. He plays Lt. Phil Gains and is a cool character who doesn't like to get too close to people(he has a penchant for 30's style music and vernacular). He lives with his girlfriend, played by Catherine Deneuve, who happens to be a Call Girl but neither of them are willing to give up the dangers(mental and physical) of their careers. However, they dream about running off to Europe. It's as if they are afraid of what will happen if they do.

To sum it up, Gains is called in to investigate the body of a young girl found dead on a beach. It is ruled a suicide but the girl's parents, mainly her father, refuse to believe it. The father, played by actor Ben Johnson, is seeking revenge and Gains wants to be one step ahead of him.

To me, the standout in this film is actor Eddie Albert, who I've always had a crush on. This is probably the creepiest role he ever played. He's a lawyer with mob connections and won't let anyone stand in his way. He is also a client of Deneuve's character and grins ear-to-ear when talking about the dead girl and the pleasure he and friends got from her. We're talking HUGE creep factor here. In one scene he refers to the girl by saying "She could get milk out of a crowbar." Don't think I need to explain THAT line.

This film is the typical 1970's cop film with lounge jazz music playing over a car scene. Pretty tame by today's standards but did earn an R-rating. There is reference to a porno film that is supposed to feature Albert's character Leo Sellers(again pushing that creep factor up!). "Hustle" is probably one of Burt's more forgettable films but it is fun to see him take to a role so seriously after seeing him in Smokey and his other action films.

Having collaborated on "The Longest Yard", director Robert Aldrich cast Burt Reynolds and Eddie Albert again in the enigmatic "Hustle". Reynolds plays LA cop Phil Gaines. He and his wife have basically no relationship, so Phil lives with call girl Nicole Britton (Catherine Deneuve). When a young woman gets found dead on the beach one day, Phil and his colleague Louis Belgrave (Paul Winfield) get hired to investigate. They conclude that she died of a self-induced drug overdose. But they don't tell her parents (Ben Johnson and Eileen Brennan) that there were massive amounts of semen in all three orifices of the woman's body, and that the woman was a stripper in a nightclub. The father is convinced that this was not a suicide, and is determined to investigate on his own if necessary.

I have to say that the movie has a rather convoluted plot: the number of characters - and the question of each character's relationship to each other - makes the whole thing hard to follow at times. As it is, following the revelation of the body at the beginning, the movie sort of throws Phil into the story from right out of the blue. It seems that mostly, the movie functions as a look at the underbelly of 1970s LA, including a hostage situation in one scene. And, if all else fails, there's always something sexy for Catherine Deneuve to do (namely the part about what Switzerland has). A surprise appearance - although they do credit him - is Ernest Borgnine as Phil and Louis's superior; he's the only character who seems as if he's about to have a seizure or something.

Overall, I think that the movie is seeing, if only once. While it is true that the movie progresses pretty slowly, I actually would assert that that adds some realism: not every detective/action story has to be a series of explosions and mayhem.

All in all, a worthwhile movie. BTW, did you notice who the hold up man at the end is? It's Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund. And I wonder if David Spielberg is related to Steven Spielberg.

Sammy Davis Jr. hugging Nixon...

Hustle is a terrific film with a a really nice performance by the always under used (the late great) Paul Winfield, he and Burt Reynolds work well together and Eddie Albert is scary as the low life "leo sellers". the stunt the one reviewer is talking about re: albino actor falling from high rise while blasting his pistol into camera is the late great, Dar Robinson from Reynolds' other film, "stick" in the early eighties. i'm glad this is on DVD now and finally a Reinold's' film that is letter boxed. i hope they can re-do the other films IE: "white lightning", "gator" and "shamus" in letterbox form especially "gator" cause it was shot in Todd A-O scope.