Bill Murray Fest: Mad Dog and Glory


1993 drama

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A cop saves the life of a fun-loving mobster who returns the favor by gifting him with Uma Thurman for a week. The cop, resistant initially, gets used to the idea of having Uma Thurman around.

My mind wandered throughout this movie, partially because I had mentally prepared myself for a comedy and didn't get one and partially because I was completely distracted trying to make Kill Bill jokes. I liked this movie even if I didn't really like Bill Murray all that much in it. Initially, at least. I thought he was miscast with a stand-up act that I guessed was supposed to be bad but not quite sure. He does get a musical number that is really good, and at the end, when he plays this mob guy with this kind of ironic delicacy like only Bill Murray could. And oh, man, the guy demonstrates that he can throw a punch. I guess that shouldn't surprise anybody because he's Bill "Fucking" Murray and can do pretty much anything. David Caruso can pretty much do only one thing, he and his jackass hair. Every time he and great character actor Mike Starr (of Ed fame) faced off, I secretly hoped I'd get a chance to see the latter break the former into pieces and sit in a corner to pick his teeth with his bones. Starr, milk drinker and Phil Donahue spotter, plays a fun brute like usual. De Niro's really good in a quiet role as the titular cowardly cop, and a lot of it is body language. He's mopey, right down to his pigeon toes, and it's almost like there's some kind of Jacksonian Hobbit trickery here to make him shrivel in size compared to Murray who seems like a giant compared to him. Richard Belzer is also in this thing. Bernstein's music's kind of cool, and there's a great opening to this where black 'n' white shifts to color with a thug's lighting-up of a cigarette. The story's a little slow as this is more of a character study than a comedy, but Uma Thurman's nipple makes an appearance and we therefore can't complain. But what's the Kill Bill joke in all this? Somebody help me out there.

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