Quick Change

TCM did a prime time spotlight on actor Bill Murray on his 75th birthday last September. One of the movies that they ran was new to me: Quick Change. As always, the plot synopsis sounded interesting, so I put it on my DVR to watch it and write up a post on it.

As the movie opens, Bill Murray's character Grimm is on a subway in Manhattan, wearing a clown outfit and made up like a clown, complete with balloons and big clown shoes. But that's not all he has. He's got a bunch of explosives attached to an alarm clock wrapped around his torso, and is carrying a gun. He makes his way to the Intercity Bank, where the guard doesn't want to let him in because it's close enough to closing time to let in new customers. So of course Grimm forces his way in, considering that it's obvious what he's planning to do.

Grimm proceeds to pull out his gun and tell everyone in the branch that this is a robbery. One of the bank workers, however, presses the silent alarm, so the police come with a large contingent led by police chief Rotzinger (Jason Robards) and his second-in-command, along with a ton of cops setting up a cordon around the building and basically besieging the place. Grimm has planned for this, however, what with the explosives. He's also put everybody in the bank in the vault and locking it, setting up negotiations with the police outside that eventually result in Grimm releasing three of the hostages.

But we learn that this is a ruse. As the second and third hostages are outside while the police are planning to take them for debriefing, the woman, Phyllis (Geena Davis) sees that there's a bit of white paint on the third hostage's face. That's because the third "hostage" is actually Grimm, who was using this as a way of getting out of the bank branch despite it being otherwise surrounded. Phyllis, the woman with him, is actually an accomplice as well as Grimm's fiancée. The man who was let out as the first hostage, Loomis (Randy Quaid), is also in on the bank plot, and left the scene to get his car and pick up Grimm and Phyllis for the getaway.

Grimm's plan was to get the three of them on a plane to Tahiti, with the money taped to each of their bodies, getting away while Rotzinger would still be under the impression that Grimm was in the bank with his hostages. To keep up that ruse, Grimm goes to a pay phone to call Rotzinger, these being the days before caller ID, especially on the sort of oversized mobile phone that Rotzinger is using. However, this is where the first crack in Grimm's plan occurs. Loomis is a bit incompetent, and accidentally honks the car horn, a sound that Rotzinger can clearly hear and gives him the impression something is up. Rotzinger becomes more suspicious when the debriefing occurs, and the first three hostages released are not there. And how did Grimm get out anyway?

Meanwhile, everything that can go wrong for our three bank robbers does. Some of the road signs have been taken down, so they can't find the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to get to Kennedy Airport and their flight to Tahiti. Then they get robbed by a con artist; their car gets towed for being illegally parked; and on, and on, and on in ways that are ever more absurd. Will they be able to escape, or will Rotzinger nab them? Fortunately, the movie was made well after the disintegration of the Production Code, so it's not a foregone conclusion that the robbers have to be caught.

Quick Change is a fun idea, and a movie that's mostly successful in being entertaining. However, it's a movie that I felt lost a bit of stem in the third act, mostly because things get too absurd and manic. We get it already. Then again, it's not a bad movie, just one that I felt could have been a bit better.

Mad Dog and Glory

Ben Mankiewicz sat down with Bill Murray several nights back to present two of Murray's films. Since I was in college in the early 1990s, I have to admit that there are a bunch of smaller films from that era that I don't know so much about. An example of this is one of the films that TCM showed that night, Mad Dog and Glory. But since it sounded interesting, I recorded it and eventually got around to watching it in order to be able to do the blog post about it.

Interestingly enough, Bill Murray is neither glorious nor a mad dog in this one. Instead, the "Mad Dog" character is played by Robert De Niro and is a Chicago police officer named Wayne "Mad Dog" Dobie. The movie begins with a drug deal that goes bad, or perhaps doesn't quite go so much bad as one of the dealers is intending to murder both the guy presumably ferrying the drug money as well as his own partner in crime, leaving both of the bodies in the car to dispose of them. Mad Dog and his partner Mike (David Caruso) investigate and, as Mad Dog goes into a convenience store to pick up some snacks for a fellow cop back in the precinct, sees that the cashier has a gun on him, from a guy who would fit the description of the killer.

Now, this is also where Bill Murray's character comes in. Bill plays Frank Milo, who happens to be one of those behind the scenes gangsters who never gets his own hands dirty, but just happens to be at the convenience store when it's getting robbed and when Mad Dog shows up. Mad Dog's quick thinking saves the day. Frank, to thank Mad Dog, has one of his underlings meet Mad Dog at a cafe and give Mad Dog tickets to, of all things, a comedy club. Here, we learn that Frank has dreams of doing the stand-up comedy thing and, since he owns the club anyhow, is able to indulge his own fantasies by doing shows at the club. Who's going to stop him?

When Mad Dog shows up, he gets a cup of coffee from one of the hostesses, a young woman named Glory (Uma Thurman). A mishap occurs in which Glory accidentally spills hot coffee on Mad Dog's hand. Mad Dog really only has first-degree burns, but this is lousy customer service, and something that Frank just doesn't want to see happen. Since Glory is one of Frank's employees, Frank gives her another job to do, which is to show up at Mad Dog's apartment and basically give him anything he wants short of non-consensual sex for one week. (Mad Dog, not being married, doesn't have to worry about having a relationship with a strange girl.) Glory doesn't have much choice in the matter, as it's not just a case of her keeping her job. In fact, she's got a brother who owed a debt to Frank and the Mob, and Glory is in service to Frank as a way of paying off that debt. Of course, as things stand, Glory is never really going to be able to repay that debt.

Things get complicated when something that is to be expected by the viewer happens: Mad Dog begins to fall for Glory, even though he's supposed to give her up at the end of the week. And Frank certainly wants Glory back after the week is up. The fact that Mad Dog is getting favors from somebody known to be involved in organized crime doesn't help either. (Oddly enough, Frank ingratiates himself to Mad Dog's fellow detectives by doing impromptu stand-up in the precinct house.) Frank and Mad Dog both want Glory, leading to the climactic conflict.

Having watched Mad Dog and Glory, I can see how it had slipped under my radar and isn't well-remembered today. It's not exactly a bad movie by any means, but it feels like one of those formulaic cop comedies from the era. Everybody does well enough, but Mad Dog and Glory isn't the most memorable movie. If you've got a rainy day to fill, Mad Dog and Glory will certainly fit the bill and be entertaining enough. But is it a truly great movie? Not particularly. The leads have all done better work, I think.

Stripes

Recently I noticed that one of Pluto's movie channels had another of those early 80s comedies that I was too young to see on original release and never got around to seeing: Stripes. Since Pluto has the benefit of being able to re-start a program currently running from the beginning, I decided to watch it. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem to be available on demand on Pluto, but there are other services where you can stream or rent it.

Bill Murray plays John Winger, who's in a dead-end job as a cab driver. It doesn't really pay the rent, it doesn't keep his girlfriend happy, it isn't fulfilling, and he has to deal with a lot of passengers who make life difficult for him. John has a best friend in Russell Ziskey (Harold Ramis) who works a job that is theoretically more fulfilling, as a teacher of English as a second language to immigrants. However, the immigrants in his class also make his life difficult. So over pizza one night, Winger gets a brilliant idea: why don't the two of them drop everything and enlist in the army? It's a chance to see the world and make a better life for themselves.

Yeah, right. At least this was at the height of the Cold War, not nowadays with all of the political nonsense, although at least there's no longer the chance of being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. They get assigned to a stereotypically tough drill sergeant in Hulka (Warren Oates, again doing comedy), who finds that he has problems with Winger because of Winger's less than dedicated attitude to the army. Winger and Ziskey also discover that they're not the only ones trying to escape personal problems, as there's Ox (John Candy), who in the real world would probably have failed his army physical, although here's portrayed as wanting to get into shape to be better accepted by women.

Winger, Ziskey, and the rest of the platoon have the sort of shenanigans you'd expect out of basic training in any service comedy, with love interests thrown in too for good measure. One of the scenes has Hulka's commanding officer, Capt. Stillman (John Larroquette) screw up and order the men to do something that winds up getting Hulka injured. Somehow, the platoon is able to finish basic anyway, and this impresses the general, who sends them on a mission to Europe to guard the prototype of a new assault vehicle.

Needless to say, the platoon makes a mess of things because Winger and Ziskey abscond with the vehicle to visit their girlfriends, now stationed at a base in West Germany. They wind up driving into communist Czechoslovakia by accident, and have to get out.

Stripes was a commercial success when it was released, and it's easy to see why. Although in many ways there's nothing really new here compared to the decades of previous service comedies, the material is universal enough and there's enough different stuff to make something that seems fresh if done well. Unsurprisingly, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis were experts at this sort of comedy, along with the supporting cast, making Stripes a very fun ride to take with them.