Loose Cannons

Loose Cannons (1990)

Runtime: 94 minutes

Directed by: Bob Clark

Starring: Gene Hackman, Dan Aykroyd, Dom DeLuise, Ronny Cox, Nancy Travis, Robert Prosky

From: Tristar

Here’s something a little unusual from me. A movie I disliked so much that I couldn’t watch more than a half hour of it. I’ll explain.

On a certain thread on a certain messageboard, some people have un-ironic love for this flick. I’ve known for a few years that a lot of people don’t like the film and find it to be off-putting (despite its very nice cast) so I was interested in finally seeing it. It wasn’t at my local Blockbuster and I am not a Netflixer (at least not yet) I had to wait until it showed up one night on Encore (yep, I’m still getting those channels for free for some reason) last month, and I watched it then… or rather, I watched it until I turned it off due to me disliking it so much.

In short, the movie is about a traditional down on his luck cop (Hackman, who wears a tremendous Washington Redskins Starter jacket; they’re a pro football team, if you don’t know) who teams up with a loony cop with multiple personalities (Aykroyd) to track down some criminals. I didn’t get to see much of the actual plan of the criminals (the opening had some guys dressed up in costume get gunned down in a boat in a horrible-looking and confusing scene) but the end result is that they’re looking for a long-lost sex tape of Hitler (!!!) That’s about all you need to know about the plot.

Now, the movie starts off OK-enough (aside from the aforementioned opening) with Hackman doing a decent job and there actually being some decent jokes. But then Aykroyd’s character comes in and things get derailed. It was an extremely off-putting character, obnoxious to the extreme and unbelievable how he was able to deduce what happened at the crimescene from the most random of clues. Not even Sherlock Holmes could have done such a thing. Hackman starts hating his new partner with an irrational anger (IMO) then what made me stop watching the film a half hour in was one scene set in an S&M club. I swear I’m not making any of the plot up, by the way. Stuff happens and one of Dan’s “wacky” personas come through to save the day, and that was WAY more off-putting and obnoxious than his usual character, I could take no more. To think that long-time veteran actor Gene hasn’t starred in too many comedies (aside from the very end of his career) and THIS was one of them. Totally baffling to me. Despite his awesome jacket*, the movie is downright horrible and should never be watched.

• In that same thread I’ve heard people say that they wish Gene would have worn that jacket in his earlier and later films, from the likes of Superman, The French Connection, and even Unforgiven. Sounds like a good idea to me.

My apologies for getting this up at this late hour, but I'll make a special post Tuesday morning where I will explain, and also post some odd videos.