Sharky's Machine

Sharky’s Machine (1981)

Runtime: 122 minutes

Directed by: Burt Reynolds

Starring: Burt (but of course), Vittorio Gassman, Brian Keith, Bernie Casey, Rachel Ward

From: Warner Brothers/Orion

Here’s a movie that I’ve seen once before, but I managed to watch again recently, and in a rather strange way. The first time I saw it, it was a DVD rental from the local library, of all places. This time, I saw it on a VHS tape… almost as old as I am! Way back in ’08, I was at a flea market north of Leesburg. It was in order to see a wrestling show; I know, appropriate entertainment for a small flea market. Well, at one table I stumbled upon a bunch of old VHS tapes of stuff tabled off of premium cable. It just happened to mainly be stuff from the 80’s, meaning tapes almost as old as I am. I picked out 3 that featured films I mainly had not seen before. I was offered his entire collection for 20 bucks. I declined, as I had seen or already owned a good amount of those movies already. In hindsight, I F’ed up, but I’ll explain why in another post coming up in a few days.

So, it was finally a few days ago that I actually watched something from one of those tapes, and it was this film. The sound wasn’t the best, but the picture looked surprisingly good considering I believe it was taped sometime in ’83.

To sum it up, I understand this borrows a lot from the 40’s film Laura (which I haven’t seen) and this was Burt’s try at becoming Dirty Harry. It didn’t quite work out. Basically, it’s the story of the greatly named Tom Sharky, a cop in Atlanta- a town you get to see big sweeping shots of throughout the film-who has things go wrong in a drug bust, so he gets demoted to vice squad; he meets a wacky group of characters, including Charles Durning, who acts like SUCH a cartoon angry yelling asshole, it’s insulting to your intelligence. Anyhow, Sharky and some of his pals (they’re known as his Machine; I don’t know if it’s like baseball pitcher Brian Wilson and his Machine or not; if you don’t know what I’m referring to, it’s probably for the best) stumble upon a case that involves both a crime kingpin-Gassman, trying his best to look like old-school Sean Connery-and a candidate for Governor of the state (Earl Holliman). A high-class prostitute named Dominoe (Ward, looking rather attractive) is also part of the deal.

Overall, this movie COULD have been cool and a classic. But, it’s just too damn long. There are some time where it really drags. There’s odd moments of humor. There seems to be too much crammed into the story. And, like I said already Charles Durning had a character that was such a ridiculous caricature of an angry cantankerous cop. It’s a turn-off.

But, it’s not awful. There’s a big stunt fall at the end; sure, much of the actual stunt done wasn’t featured in the movie (instead it’s replaced by an obvious dummy). There’s such things as some Japanese people who are apparently ninjas, a scene set at the old Atlanta Braves ballpark, Fulton County Stadium –why, I don’t know-a jazzy score, fingers being cut off, and Henry Silva as a drug-abusing killer who loves to yell a lot. Yet, with all that it's still boring at times. Figures.

I'll be back Monday night with a discussion over some of the strange stuff I've found on those ancient VHS tapes.