Night Shift

Henry Winkler is probably universally remembered as the Fonz from the TV show Happy Days, although he's had a long career both acting and being an executive producer on TV shows. He didn't make that many movies, and certainly didn't get much chance to star in movies. One where he did was Night Shift.

We don't see Winkler at first. Instead, there's an establishing scene of a guy being chased through Manhattan by a couple of criminals of some sort. He thinks he's escaped, only to find out they made it to his apartment first and have waylaid him, throwing him out the window to his death.

It's only the following day that we see Winkler. He plays Chuck Lumley, who works at the morgue, a job he's taken largely because he couldn't handle the pressure of his previous job as an investment consultant at one of the Manhattan brokerage firms. The man who died in the opening scene was a pimp, and the two guys who killed him were higher up the underworld ladder and expected to get their cut from all the pimps in the area. Showing up to ID the pimp's body is Belinda (Shelley Long), one of the pimp's prostitutes, who for some reason thinks Chuck looks familiar.

Chuck wants as little hassle in his life as possible, both professionally and personally. He's got a fiancée in Charlotte (Gina Hecht), but he seems to be going along with the engagement just to make her and her parents happy. He doesn't even seem to care much when he gets moved to the night shift to make room for a relative of the boss. However, it puts Chuck on the same shift as Bill "Blaze" Blazejowksi (Michael Keaton), a smooth operator who always seems to have some angle that's probably a scam. He can also be incredibly annoying, much to Chuck's consternation.

Anyhow, the reason Belinda thought Chuck looked familiar is because she lives in the same apartment building as him. With her pimp dead, she's started taking clients up to her place, which seems risky although the alternatives without a pimp might be risker. And when she gets arrested over the Thanksgiving holiday, she doesn't have a pimp to bail her out. So she places her one phone call to... Chuck! Needless to see Charlotte and her parents are none too pleased.

Belinda's arrest gives Bill a ridiculous idea: since he's already using the morgue hearse for illicit purposes, and they're on the night shift where nobody's going to notice anything anyway, why not use the morgue resources to help out Belinda and her pimpless friends? Bill can be a kinda-sorta pimp to them, while Chuck can start using those skills as a financial advisor again by investing the money the prostitutes are making from their tricks so they'll have something left over after their beauty has faded, much like Gena Rowlands in Gloria.

Naturally, you'd think the guys who killed the previous pimps are going to figure out what's going on and come after Chuck and Bill. And sure enough, that happens for the movie's climax. But not until there's also the standard-issue romantic storyline of Chuck and Belinda developing feelings for each other.

Night Shift was directed by Ron Howard, and is a movie that has a lot of heart and is fairly charming for a movie with a pretty adult storyline. However, the movie is not without its flaws, and I think that's mostly down to the script. I don't think it's particularly realistic. But worse is that the writers made Michael Keaton's character way too annoying. Now, part of the humor is supposed to be that the character annoys poor Chuck. But he annoys us, too.

There's a lot in Night Shift that would go on to bigger things: Ron Howard as a director; Michael Keaton on the big screen and Shelley Long on the small screen; and one of Burt Bacharach's songs, "That's What Friends are For". But Night Shift is the place to see them all at the beginning.