Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

BallWubba Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

runamokprods A good movie that could have been a great movie if Burt Reynolds was a better, deeper actor. Reynolds is a great screen presence, and can be amazing in the right role. But - at least for me - probing a damaged and psychologically complex character just falls a bit outside his wheelhouse.This is a dark, bitter noir, abut cop in love with high priced call girl, who is sucked – against his will – into case of murdered sexually wild-child run away teen. There are some amazing scenes, a terrific supporting performance by Ben Johnson as the runaway's hurt and angry dad, and a powerful (if arguably obvious) last twist, but Reynolds just couldn't sell me on the pain and depth of the man.

zetes A somewhat typical and halfway decent neo-noir in the vein of Chinatown and Night Moves, though perhaps some wouldn't include it since the protagonist (played by Burt Reynolds) is a police detective. Still, it plays out very much like those kinds of mysteries. Reynolds is investigating the death of a teenage girl. It seems a pretty open-and-shut suicide case, but the girl's father (a really nasty Ben Johnson) insists that he's going to find out more. Reynolds and his partner (Paul Winfield) try to keep him out of trouble. Meanwhile, Reynolds is dealing with his complicated girlfriend situation. Catherine Deneuve plays his high-class whore girlfriend. The film also stars Eileen Brennan, Eddie Albert, Ernest Borgnine and Catherine Bach (Daisy Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard!). Robert Englund (Freddy Kreuger) also shows up as a liquor store robber late in the film. The story's okay, but kind of slow moving.

cultfilmfreaksdotcom One of those "stick with it" kind of movies. After the success of the universally entertaining THE LONGEST YARD, director Robert Aldrich reteams with Burt Reynolds in a steamy/gritty cop melodrama that takes a little while to get going.Reynolds is Phil Gaines, a bitter, worldweary detective who, living with a high priced prostitute, doesn't live the typical law and order existence. After the dead body of a drugged young girl turns up on the beach, Gaines and his partner, Paul Winfield's Belgrave, write it off as suicide. But a stubborn, unglued war veteran father, played with a frantic energy by Ben Johnson as Marty, can't let go.Overlong scenes where Burt and hooker girlfriend Nicole – played by Catherine Deneuve – involved in tedious bouts of pillow talk (especially during the first ten minutes) distract from the real stuff: Gaines and Belgrave forced to take the investigation seriously as Marty (the father) sneaks around a local mob-run strip club for answers, stalking a seedy high profile lawyer played by YARD villain Eddie Albert.Essential action scenes are thrown in whenever necessary, and yet beneath the surface is character-study of a cop discovering the truth of a victim who, having been involved in stripping and hardcore porn, wasn't very innocent to begin with. Conversations where Reynolds and Winfield discuss the validity of the case and the futility of life, while delving into pop culture movies and music, are the highlight.A clean-shaven Reynolds, a few years shy of the signature mustache and mainstream stardom, is fitfully forlorn as a man lost in the Film Noir haze, and director Robert Aldrich makes even the slower parts interesting except those conversations with Deneuve: As a love interest, she's just not interesting.And despite a tacked-on tragic finale, this cop/melodrama feels more like reading than watching – a good thing provided you won't be able to put this down once it picks up.

musiconthemoon 2 out of 5 (points off for sagging and failing to connect the characters with the plot, therefore pissing me off). Initially, the striking resemblance between the young Burt Reynolds and a young Marlon Brando caused such a distraction that it was a challenge not to try to stick an orange in his mouth and make him say "Respeck me, respeck the family" .But then Reynolds' eyebrows started acting up.Burt's eyebrows have such an amazing screen presence of their own it becomes difficult to focus on anything else. If they aren't insured I don't know what is (see also Tom Selleck's moustache for hairy trade marks. {Incidentally my spell check offers 'Saltlick' as a substitute to Selleck…Tom Saltlick}). Watch Reynolds in this film as he winces in a desperate attempt to restrain his eyebrows; the concentration on his face is amazing. Those eyebrows seem to have the ability to go all the way up and over his head to meet his arse like some cheeky Mexicans crossing a border.I have a theory that Reynolds had to grow his big moustache which we all know him for to counter balance the gravitational pull of his brows. Anyway…this film; almost really good. Paul Winfield (Chekov's captain in the 'Wrath of Khan') puts in a great performance as Reynolds' partner. Did I mention that Reynolds and Winfield play really rubbish cops? That's the mainstay of this film. These guys think that being a cop involves sitting in their office having a bitch about the world while drinking whisky from their filing cabinet; "What's this? The father of his dead child cares about her death? For Gods sake! What the hell does he have? Emotion? And he wants us to do what? Investigate? What a bastard." That wasn't a quote, even though it had quotation marks. My favourite quote comes from Winfield's character, who is inexplicably interrogating an albino black person for no reason. Yes. An albino black person. With an awesome white afro. For no reason. He beats the apologetic albino in question and yells "you chalky mother f*?ker!" at him, which I have appropriated as my new favourite insult. Later on we learn that he's trying to single-handedly cut down the worldwide albino population. It's good to have a hobby I suppose, although it has nothing to do with the plot (very few characters in this film do, including our protagonists and most of the antagonists).When you can draw your eyes away from Reynolds eyebrows (something he himself tries to do constantly) you can definitely notice the Foley artist hard at work. One scene had Reynolds' hooker girlfriend brush her hair which sounds like she was tearing newspaper, or when a guy walks across a boat deck sounding like he's Mr. Tumnus tap dancing on the roof of a garden shed.Burt's girlfriend in this film is some kind of sexual businessperson who likes to sleep with old people for money, and takes "interesting" phone calls on Burt's funky telephone (that's not a euphemism). He doesn't mind though, presumably because of the two crazy eyebrows he has to deal with, which he probably calls his 'twins'. I have to say I have never been confident on the phone, and so don't phone the 'sex lines', however if I did, and had to pay for it, then I wouldn't want the kind of indifference that this woman deals out to her clients, I get enough of that in real life. She actually ends one saucy phone encounter with "…and there you go" like she's just solved a sudoku puzzle. Sexy.Overall this is a good film with good performances from everyone, but the script seems to be confused. The message seems to be that if you are a nobody then nobody cares. Unless you're an eyebrow.To be honest I watched an episode of Magnum PI, incidentally starring 'Tom Saltlick', called 'Way of the Stalking Horse' (season 6) which was stylistically similar to this film. It was gritty and dark, but just plain better. And shorter.As a geeky side note; a security guard confuses Magnum with Burt Reynolds in the season 7 episode of Magnum P.I called 'L.A' …and Tom Saltlick's eyebrows don't dance on his face like two drunk monkeys at a rave.Ross @ www.musiconthemoon.com