HICKEY & BOGGS (1972)
Wednesday, July 10, 2024 at 07:53PM In Walter Hill's spare, hardboiled, maximum bleak, screenplay - his best by far - Bill Cosby and director(!) Robert Culp eviscerate the good-guy images they cultivated in their hit TV show I SPY, staying bitter, drunk, resigned to failure and impassive with depression. Cosby's so catatonic he can hardly pick up a pistol, and Culp laments being the worst shot in southern California.
So low-key, low-rent LA it equals the vibe of John Flynn's masterpiece, THE OUTFIT. A male hooker gargles with mouthwash after giving Culp a $20 blowjob; Culp's estranged wife, a nude dancer, tells him to "kill himself" after he gets her one last gig. Clup's beat-to-shit '67 lavender T-Bird gets blown up (lotsa cars and one helicopter explode, for reals), he buys another just like it, only with more dents.
Three extraordinary things happen, or maybe it's the same extraordinary thing happening three times: Cosby, Culp and even Vincent Gardenia all understate - and for the entire picture.
And one more extraordinary thing for a '72 private eye caper: Ted Ashford's soundtrack is understated, too. Not one note of watery Fender Rhodes!
What a cast: Michael Moriarty – wielding a M70 machine gun from a helicopter to provide oblique Vietnam allegory – Tom Signorelli, James Wood, Ed Lauter, and the great, aviator-shades wearing, stone-face wheelman/stunt driver Bill ( FRENCH CONNECtION, BULLITT) Hickman.
Why this hasn't been resurrected or remade, I can't figure. It's on Amazon in widescreen standard def and looks great. Invest the $6.99. You'll thank me..