Listen, I've had just about enough of your comedy, clown.

Quick Change

(1990)

(SPOILERS) Bill Murray’s heist comedy was a resounding flop on release, one I nevertheless caught in the cinema nearly a year later when it finally limped across to the UK. Why it sank when the subsequent year’s (or the same year’s, if you lived in Britain) What About Bob? swam is unclear, since it came at a time when Murray’s star was commercially at a peak. Warner Bros gets much of the blame for failing on the promotion front but, revisiting the picture, it’s evident Quick Change is a case of a strong script in search of a strong director, and neither of its shots-callers are that.

Murray co-directed with Howard Franklin (who also penned the screenplay, from Jay Cronley’s novel), after Jonathan Demme couldn’t squeeze it into his schedule. Which is a great shame, as the energy Demme had brought to his recent pictures Something Wild and Married to the Mob (like Quick Change, a movie featuring a circus performer with a gun; “Some clown tried to kill me”, relays mob boss Dean Stockwell after Chris Isaak fails to rub him out) is exactly what Quick Change lacks; in this case, it’s the difference between a decent movie and a classic. It would, however, make a good triple bill of movies involving a night askew with After Hours and Into the Night, both exuding an exultant sense of strangeness Quick Change only grasps fitfully; Scorsese’s film is one of his best and most underrated, a perfect black comedy from a director who rarely strays into that genre, while John Landis nails his lead character’s insomniac excursion into the twilight zone with aplomb.

Quick Change, though, is often so ridiculously static in composition and staging, you become aware of just how fully the performers are carrying it, and you credit their work all the more as a result (so too, Randy Edleman’s score is effective when used, but features too infrequently). Apparently Ron Howard turned the movie down and, while I’m not a fan of his work, he’d probably have ensured the finished film had a better sense of flow. This is a picture with natural drive and desperation in its DNA, and it would have taken very little to wind that up to the maximum. Murray’s Grimm stages an audacious bank robbery dressed as a clown, escapes ingeniously with his two accomplices, Phyllis (Geena Davis) and Loomis (Randy Quaid), only to find his attempts to reach New York’s JFK Airport continually thwarted by the town he’s desperate to leave, with Jason Robard’s dogged Chief Rotzinger bearing down on him.

It’s ideal material to hang lunatic and unlikely interludes on, and imbue its characters with ever-increasing frustration at events’ determined resistance to go according to plan. In this, Murray’s deadpan charisma is perfectly posited, be it his vague attempts to suggest he’s a psycho (“I shot the lights. They were looking at me” he explains of the cameras in the bank, while pretending to be a Nam veteran), responding to Robards (a succession of clown one-liners all land), asking directions from some road workers (“Thank you guys. You could’ve given us help, but you’ve given us so much more”) or opining on the difficulties in getting through airport check-in (“Those damn terrorists have made it tough on us bank robbers”). This is Murray’s delivery at its finest, responding to each new incident with the same rumpled unruffledness.

He’s ably supported by Davis and Quaid. The latter wheels out his idiot best buddy for what was probably the umpteenth time, responsible for honking a horn and setting Rotzinger on their trail (“Sometimes their noses are horns” offers one of Rotzinger’s subordinates by way of explanation for how the sound might have emanated from within the bank). At one point, able to take no more of Tony Shaloub’s uncomprehending Arabic cabbie (“What, have you got shit in your ears?” Quaid exclaims unhingedly) he memorably leaps out of a moving vehicle, running straight into a billboard. Davis has easy chemistry with Murray, even if her role isn’t the most pro-active, and she’s encumbered with a second-rate subplot concerning whether or not to tell Grimm about her pregnancy. She’s at least rewarded with one of the best lines, though (“No, no if that was our plane it would be crashing”).

But it’s the incidental encounters that really sell this, from a surreal bicycle joust with mops as lances (“It’s bad luck just seeing a thing like that” gasps Quaid), to Shaloub’s incomprehensible antics, proving to be a thorn in their side long after they have exited his cab, to their encounter with the mafia (“This ain’t my dick in your back” exclaims Stanley Tucci’s gun wielding gangster; “That’s a relief” responds Murray) to their bus ride from hell, courtesy of Philip Bosco’s anal driver demanding exact change, unable to give an exact estimate of the walk between the bus stop and airport before offering a precise “21 minutes”. The bus sequence is particularly sublime, with Grimm desperately waiting in a very slow queue in a shop nearby for his exact change, responding to the local odours (“What’s that smell?” asks Phyllis; “Used wine” replies Grimm) and faced with a man with a guitar strapped to his back who repeatedly fails to make adjustments for the size of the door.

At the airport, Woody Allen regular Ira Wheeler offers priceless horror at whatever Murray and Quaid are up to behind a men’s room cubicle door (it’s an old set up, but it’s all in the delivery) and Kurtwood Smith cameos with a veneer of unrepentant obnoxiousness as the mafia guy in charge. Howard reportedly didn’t take the movie because there was no one to root for, missing that you always root for Bill Murray. Added to which, Phyllis’ pregnancy lends the picture an excuse for this trio not to face the long arm of the law, after which it is emphasised that Smith’s guy is a real villain who makes more in a day than Grimm could make off with in a week; I’m not sure the picture really needs to foist a moral hierarchy on us, but that’s in the nature of Hollywood studio think. If the criminals are going to get away with it, they have to be thoroughly decent criminals really.

Quick Change was previously adapted five years earlier, with the unlikely combination of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Kim Cattrall (set in Montreal), and I’d be surprised if it isn’t adapted again at some point. There’s little fault in the script or performers, but a director able to embrace its frenetic splendour could have engineered an unalloyed classic.

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

He’ll regret it to his dying day, if ever he lives that long.

The Quiet Man (1952) (SPOILERS) The John Wayne & John Ford film for those who don’t like John Wayne & John Ford films? The Quiet Man takes its cues from Ford’s earlier How Green Was My Valley in terms of, well less Anglophile and Hibernophile and Cambrophile nostalgia respectively for past times, climes and heritage, as Wayne’s pugilist returns to his family seat and stirs up a hot bed of emotions, not least with Maureen O’Hara’s red-headed hothead. The result is a very likeable movie, for all its inculcated Oirishness and studied eccentricity.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

Well, something’s broke on your daddy’s spaceship.

Apollo 13 (1995) (SPOILERS) The NASA propaganda movie to end all NASA propaganda movies. Their original conception of the perilous Apollo 13 mission deserves due credit in itself; what better way to bolster waning interest in slightly naff perambulations around a TV studio than to manufacture a crisis event, one emphasising the absurd fragility of the alleged non-terrestrial excursions and the indomitable force that is “science” in achieving them? Apollo 13 the lunar mission was tailor made for Apollo 13 the movie version – make believe the make-believe – and who could have been better to lead this fantasy ride than Guantanamo Hanks at his all-American popularity peak?

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989) (SPOILERS) There’s Jaws , there’s Star Wars , and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws ’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy , to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “ more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie ”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “ mainly boring ”. Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the

You think a monkey knows he’s sitting on top of a rocket that might explode?

The Right Stuff (1983) (SPOILERS) While it certainly more than fulfils the function of a NASA-propaganda picture – as in, it affirms the legitimacy of their activities – The Right Stuff escapes the designation of rote testament reserved for Ron Howard’s later Apollo 13 . Partly because it has such a distinctive personality and attitude. Partly too because of the way it has found its through line, which isn’t so much the “wow” of the Space Race and those picked to be a part of it as it is the personification of that titular quality in someone who wasn’t even in the Mercury programme: Chuck Yaeger (Sam Shephard). I was captivated by The Right Stuff when I first saw it, and even now, with the benefit of knowing-NASA-better – not that the movie is exactly extolling its virtues from the rooftops anyway – I consider it something of a masterpiece, an interrogation of legends that both builds them and tears them down. The latter aspect doubtless not NASA approved.

We’ve got the best ball and chain in the world. Your ass.

Wedlock (1991) (SPOILERS) The futuristic prison movie seemed possessed of a particular cachet around this time, quite possibly sparked by the grisly possibilities of hi-tech disincentives to escape. On that front, HBO TV movie Wedlock more than delivers its FX money shot. Elsewhere, it’s less sure of itself, rather fumbling when it exchanges prison tropes for fugitives-on-the-run ones.

Drank the red. Good for you.

Morbius (2022) (SPOILERS) Generic isn’t necessarily a slur. Not if, by implication, it’s suggestive of the kind of movie made twenty years ago, when the alternative is the kind of super-woke content Disney currently prioritises. Unfortunately, after a reasonable first hour, Morbius descends so resignedly into such unmoderated formula that you’re left with a too-clear image of Sony’s Spider-Verse when it lacks a larger-than-life performer (Tom Hardy, for example) at the centre of any given vehicle.

So, you’re telling me that NASA is going to kill the President of the United States with an earthquake?

Conspiracy Theory (1997) (SPOILERS) Mel Gibson’s official rehabilitation occurred with the announcement of 2016’s Oscar nominations, when Hacksaw Ridge garnered six nods, including Mel as director. Obviously, many refuse to be persuaded that there’s any legitimate atonement for the things someone says. They probably weren’t even convinced by Mel’s appearance in Daddy’s Home 2 , an act of abject obeisance if ever there was one. In other circles, though, Gibbo, or Mad Mel, is venerated as a saviour unsullied by the depraved Hollywood machine, one of the brave few who would not allow them to take his freedom. Or at least, his values. Of course, that’s frequently based on alleged comments he made, ones it’s highly likely he didn’t. But doesn’t that rather appeal to the premise of his 23-year-old star vehicle Conspiracy Theory , in which “ A good conspiracy theory is an unproveable one ”?

He doesn’t want to lead you. He just wants you to follow.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) (SPOILERS) The general failing of the prequel concept is a fairly self-evident one; it’s spurred by the desire to cash in, rather than to tell a story. This is why so few prequels, in any form, are worth the viewer/reader/listener’s time, in and of themselves. At best, they tend to be something of a well-rehearsed fait accompli. In the movie medium, even when there is material that withstands closer inspection (the Star Wars prequels; The Hobbit , if you like), the execution ends up botched. With Fantastic Beasts , there was never a whiff of such lofty purpose, and each subsequent sequel to the first prequel has succeeded only in drawing attention to its prosaic function: keeping franchise flag flying, even at half-mast. Hence Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore , belatedly arriving after twice the envisaged gap between instalments and course-correcting none of the problems present in The Crimes of Grindelwald .

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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