The body of teenager Gloria Hollinger is found dead on a Los Angeles beach, and Lt. Phil Gaines is in charge of the investigation. Gaines learns that the girl, a stripper and prostitute, committed suicide, but he ignores the connection between her and a powerful mob lawyer, Leo Sellers. Hollinger's father, however, is not satisfied with Gaines's results, and attempts to investigate the case on his own.
Burt Reynolds Catherine Deneuve Ben Johnson Paul Winfield Eileen Brennan Eddie Albert Ernest Borgnine Catherine Bach Jack Carter James Hampton Colleen Brennan Chuck Hayward David Estridge Peter Brandon David Spielberg Naomi Stevens Med Flory Steve Shaw Dino Washington Anthony Eldridge Barry Russo Don Billett Hal Baylor Nancy Bonniwell Don 'Red' Barry Karl Lukas Gene Chronopoulos Patrice Rohmer Alvin Hammer Show All…
Crime e Paixão, Strømeren og luksuspigen, La cité des dangers, Straßen der Nacht, Un gioco estremamente pericoloso, Destino fatal, Грязное дело, La Cité des dangers, Неравна игра, فشار, 허슬, פעילות לוהטת / פגישה עם הגורל / הפריצה והבלש, Hintaan mihin hyvänsä, 活跃
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Action! - The Postwar Hollywood 3: Reworking Aldrich
Aldrich seeks to replicate 30/40s film noir, particularly those starring Bogart as Marlowe, with a slow burn, at times sleazy (especially with that reveal), Reynolds as a suave man detective and a dreamy vibe and cinematography that occasionally feels as if you are sleeping awake.
The romance and chemistry between Reynolds and Deneuve are fine; they aren't anything to write home about, but they put in an effort, and there is some spark between them. There are some great twists and turns in this case that kept my interest even when it seemed the movie was losing me. Again, the cinematography, with its dreamlike quality backed by the score and the lack…
Robert Aldrich State of the Union in 1975: everybody is full of shit, everything is up for sale, and any authentic feeling is bound to end up in the gutter. The lighting is brash, the score and some of the transitions are out of a mid-70s cop show, and the cops' matter-of-fact handling of the young dead woman's sex life couldn't be uglier, but the movie's vulgar despair couldn't be deeply felt. The hero is a wounded cop who thinks in terms of old movies, but there are none of the even vague allusions most of the other neo-noirs of the period tip their hats towards, no romantic defeatism or cynical glee, just the sigh over the fact that in…
A pretty solid neo-noir with a great pairing of Burt Reynolds and Catherine Deneuve. He's a cop and she's a high-class call girl - and Burt's girlfriend. An interesting study of their relationship.
There's a lot of misogyny - men hitting women- and casual bigotry against various ethnic minorities, but it's probably a pretty authentic moral picture of the mid-seventies.
Phil (Reynolds) and his partner Louis (Paul Winfield) are investigating the drowning of a young woman. It seems to be a suicide but the girl's father (Ben Johnson) is not accepting that. The cops find links to a mob lawyer (Eddie Albert), who is also a client of Nicole's (Deneuve), but still believe it was a suicide. But the father…
This neo-noir as reactionary response to post-hippie decadence missed the zeitgeist on the subject by more than a few years, with Joe (1970), Dirty Harry (1971), Electra Glide in Blue (1973), and Death Wish (1974), among others, beating it to the punch (See J. Hoberman’s book “Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties” for an interesting perspective on the convergence of the political and pop cultural of this period). Steve Shagan wrote the screenplay to Hustle and in some ways, within a more generified vehicle, continued the themes he earnestly and somewhat clumsily (Oscar nomination notwithstanding) explored two years earlier in Save the Tiger (which, like Joe, was directed by John G. Avildsen). Lathering on the lament…
forgot how tonally ridiculous this is, a sort of shaggy crime film turned seedy 70s policier that is almost impossible to truly take seriously thanks to (a presumably intentional) weird sense of humor, like this exchange between Burt Reynolds, Paul Winfield and Ernest Borgnine:
PW: “she had semen in her”
EB: “where?”
PW: “evvverywhere”
BR: “in every orifice, as they say”
EB: *raises eyebrows* “gangbang?”
I refuse to believe this isn’t a comedy, even if it gets rather brutal at times, a similar freewheeling tone to Aldrich and Reynolds prior pairing, The Longest Yard (albeit nowhere near as good or rousing)
What a filthy, brutal film, even the heavily contrasted color cinematography seems to evoke a sense of rotting decay and immoral corruption. A cop stuck in a past when things seemed to be less unfair and where honor still meant something, but the fact is that he is also deeply corrupted and confused by his dirty surroundings. We are under Reagan’s sun (or we will soon be), there might not exist neither good nor wrong, but there is still death. Culture is prejudice and adultery and the economy is murder and uneven conditions, social inequality goes beyond money, it deprives you of your name. Such an angry film, Aldrich surely got some political ideas from Losey when they worked together.
Yesterday when I was young
There were so many songs that waited to be sung
So many wild pleasures that lay in store for me
And so much pain my dazzled eyes refused to see
I nearly forgot how much I love this movie.
After striking box office gold with the crowdpleasing The Longest Yard, Robert Aldrich returned a year later with both lead actors, Burt Reynolds and Eddie Albert, in a quite unexpected and totally different follow-up. A dark and disillusioned neo-noir that I consider one of the great unsung masterpieces of 70s cinema and one of Robert Aldrich’s very best movies. It may not be a perfect film and a few of its elements have aged less well…
Who knew Burt Reynolds and Catherine Deneuve made a film together? I had no clue but as soon as I had discovered, I had to see it. It's as if french and american cinema become one, with a bit of more preponderance of the american part.
A detective story and a troubled love story, it's the kind of film that does not know what path it wants to follow but with such a director with Robert Aldrich, even half told stories can be compelling. Sometimes the humour is a bit dry and doesn't feel like humour at all, however it makes up for the visual component of storytelling. It's a story that should not work but with these two actors it functions properly.
Ben Johnson's grieving father character (Martin) should be in the Smithsonian. The reason for his presence being to educate future generations of what was originally meant by 'patriarchy' and 'toxicity'.
His gravelly enunciations sound as though they emanate from an unusually unpleasant hell, his face is carved out of the rock of the prairie and his resolve and resilience seem to evoke the myths of the old west.
He dominates his scenes with Reynolds, and one of the most indelible childhood cinematic memories I have is when he bellows:
'You oughta covered her up!. You rotten bastard. You oughta covered her up!'. [as his dead daughters Gloria's exposed breasts jiggle in the foreground.
From the that opening to the punch in the gut ending this is an excellent example of seventies grime but there is around 20 15 minutes of Deneuve that could have been cut.
Hustle attempts hard to elevate itself from many other American cop films from the mid-nineteen-seventies, and in many regards, it largely succeeds. Directed and produced by Robert Aldrich, who commonly invested his films with both cynicism and honesty, and follows homicide detectives Lieutenant Phil Gaines (Burt Reynolds) and his partner Sergeant Louis Belgrave (Paul Winfield). The two become embroiled in a homicide investigation after the body of a young girl is washed up on a beach, and their subsequent inquiries eventually expose corruption in some high places. At the same time, the film focuses on Gaines as he increasingly attempts to handle a long list of troubling things in his life, not least of all his feelings regarding his girlfriend,…
Hustle is a 70s neo-noir from Robert Aldrich. It’s a twisty crime story about an alcoholic cop looking into the death of a young woman.
That ought to be enough to get this on your watchlist.
Not so fast… Unfortunately, this is not Aldrich’s best work. Far from it. In fact, this thing is a dog.
Hustle is slow and pointless. Aldrich makes an effort at style and coolness in the early scenes, but the material is trash and he knows it. By the end, he is reveling in the scuzzy, seedy and misogynistic.
It’s not all Aldrich’s fault. He was co-producer with the star, Burt Reynolds, who is terribly miscast and ineffective in the lead role. When Reynolds’s performance…
Robert Aldrich’s film-noir in which a jaded veteran cop investigates the mysterious death of an LA stripper. Starring Burt Reynolds and Catherine Deneuve.
The story concerns the body of teenager Gloria Hollinger (Sharon Kelly) who is found perished on a Los Angeles beach, and Lieutenant Phil Gaines (Burt Reynolds) is in charge of the examination.
Phil discovers that the girl, a stripper and prostitute, killed herself, but he takes no notice of the link between her and a commanding mob attorney, Leo Sellers (Eddie Albert).
Gloria’s father (Ben Johnson), however, is not convinced with Phil’s results, and tries to examine the mystery on his own.
Burt Reynolds gives an okay performance in his role as the lieutenant who doesn’t show…
