Miami Blues (1990)

Memorable, crazy movie

Fantastic!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Miami Blues is the first film based on Charles Willeford's series of novels featuring hard boiled detective Hoke Moseley. According to Lawrence Block "Quirky is the word that always comes to mind, Willeford wrote quirky books about quirky characters, and seems to have done so with a magnificent disregard for what anyone else thought."Miami Blues is a Film Soleil Noir that cinematographer Tak Fujimoto infuses with a bright sunny tropical pastel pallet.The story. Freddy Frenger ex con. Petty thief. Con artist. Freelancer. Narcissist nut job. Wings to Miami. In air identity theft. Get's a Hare Krishna come on. Breaks the cultists finger. Krishna goes into shock. Kicks the consciousness bucket. Krishna croaked.Freddy with new identity. Hermann Gottlieb. Cruises the airport. Steals suitcase. Checks into hotel. Bellhop Pedro is the man to see. Orders some local talent. Susie knocks. Young. Looks like High School. Looks like jail bait. Waifish. Okeechobee outcast. Cracker clam. Dispenses fifty dollar sucks.Freddy asks for ID. Freddy tries to trade her the suitcase clothes. Slow on the uptake. Susy will do it for a suitcase dress. Easy to BS. Easy to string along. Just what Freddy needs, and she can cook too. A perfect pair. They get it on.Freddy and the clueless Susie have now become part of a long tradition of various combinations of couples on the run/lam that stretch from Gable and Lombard in It Happened One Night (1934) through Classic Noirs, Out Of The Past (1947), They Live by Night (1948), Gun Crazy (1950), Where Danger Lives (1950), Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951), Roadblock (1951), right up to Classic Neo Noirs, The Getaway (1971), Kill Me Again (1989), Wild at Heart (1990), True Romance (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994).Meanwhile back at the baggage claim crime scene the Detective Hoke Moseley and Sgt. Bill Henderson investigate the case of the dead disciple. Hoke is a rumpled, coarse, depressed boozer. He wears store bought teeth, is strapped for money and lives in rundown residence hotel. Deco decadence.Through rudimentary detective work Hoke traces down Freddy. But Freddy coldcocks Hoke steals his badge and becomes a freelancing loose canon a perverted Robin Hood who robs from the crooks and gives to himself. Baldwin plays the quick to take advantage ex-con with bravado. His intense bright blues spotlighting a hair trigger sociopath tendency. Ward is great as the laid back Hoke, but you wish he had even more screen time to develop his character. Leigh is adequate as the hooker with a heart of gold, she may fit somebody's idea or type of hot but to me she seems almost too plain jane and a bit retarded. She does effectively convey the storybook girl who hopes her prince charming will rescue her from a life of going down on losers.For me Armitage made the mistake of spending too much time on the Freddy-Susie relationship (probably a box office decision) and that robs us from getting more of Hoke Moseley who should have been the main star. Music by Gary Chang. 7/10

Frederick Frenger Jr. (Alec Baldwin) is a violent psychopathic thief recently released from prison. He likes to be called Junior. He flies into Miami and starts stealing. A Hare Krishna bugs him and Junior breaks his finger. The guy dies. Sgt. Bill Henderson (Charles Napier) and Sgt. Hoke Moseley (Fred Ward) investigates the supposed homicide. Junior hires prostitute Susie Waggoner (Jennifer Jason Leigh) with a heart of gold. She's clueless to his criminal ways.Writer/director George Armitage seems intend on creating wacky characters than actually coming up with funny scenes. The actors are all putting in a great effort to do weird things. Baldwin is a psycho. Leigh is an idiot with a weird voice. Ward's got the teeth. I just wish more effort was put into making funny dialog and hilarious scenes.

As the credits rolled and we had to listen once more to Norman Greenbaum's much overrated, Spirit in the Sky, I wondered what had led me to this movie in the first place. Based upon a book by Charles Willeford it is variously described as 'exciting', 'off beat', 'far out' or the more predictable 'underrated'. Whatever had led me here, I was left reflecting on how this film might have worked for me. The three main actors are fine and if Alec Baldwin is not one of my favourites he is certainly good here as is the seductive Jennifer Jason Leigh and eccentric, Fred Ward. First problem - nil chemistry between Baldwin and Leigh. Only the scenes with Ward in come alive to any great extent, so maybe Ward should have played the baddie and not the cop and done the frolicking with Leigh. Problem two, which, I guess really should be problem one, I don't believe any of it. I don't believe a freshly released guy would be so upfront and in everybody's face from day one. I don't believe in the prostitute turned housewife and I couldn't understand why Ward had to do everything by himself - he is a cop not a private eye. Okay, rant over, everybody else seems to like it, Spirit in the Sky included.

Miami blues is a really dark comedy with a lot more to it than whats meets the eye. Alec Baldwin plays a recently released sociopath murderer and thief who manages himself to steel a police badge in Miami. He is joined by a clueless hooker (jennifer Jason)who thinks she has found a decent man to settle down with. Fred Ward plays the officer trying to apprehend Baldwin and get his badge back. Mmiami blues is a great film mostly thanks to the performances by the three main characters. Baldwin does a beautiful job playing this psychopath in a way that you start rooting for him, even though he is murdering, assaulting and steeling from people, you start seeing him as a really sick guy with the mental development of a child. I mean we clearly know his actions are no good at all, but he plays it with a certain quality that even makes you feel sorry for the guy. This ambiguity with which he play the character is what builds the dark humor in this film, because he seems as if he really isn't aware of the possible consequences of his actions. Jennifer Jason beautifully plays the gorgeous and naive prostitute that finds herself falling in love for this criminal. Fred Ward also does a great job playing the cop desperate to recover his badge from Baldwin. This movie greatly shows Baldwin'versatility, and kind of makes me thing of a much lighter version of Henry; Portrait of a serial killer, in the way that both movies deal with leading characters that even thought their morals are highly questionables (they kill and steel just for the kick of it) they are not entirely unlikeable to the audiences witnessing their acts. Great performances, Really Good film.