I really liked this movie, saw it for the first time the other day, the only downside is the part played by charles durning I think (Sharky's boss in vice). Oh my lord, the atrocious nature of his acting in this movie has to be seen to be believed. I can't adequately explain it, it's just...terrible. Any comments?
shareSorry man, I'll just chalk it up to a difference of opinion, but personally I loved CD in this movie!
Honestly, last week before I ever saw this topic I finished watching the movie and I thought: man, if they remake this film the only thing that won't be possible will be to find someone as awesome as CD to play Sharky's boss.
I just love the way he greets Shark when he walks into vice for the first time. Also the scene in Domino's apt where he's like "wait a minute I see vice, I see forensics, where's homicide!??" I love that scene too. Even the scene at the ball park "what a great lookin machine"
I don't know man, he's a unique character. I like him as much as you seem to hate him. Different strokes. ;)
tastes issue i reckon, i love durning in anything.
just curious, are you kinda young? maybe that's it. durning is from the old school
but i get ya, i feel the same way about rod steiger. he totally overacts every time IMO but others love him
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"You are literally too stupid to insult."
"Thank you."
Durning needed some reigning in, in this. He was way too obnoxious and overplayed. It's like Reynolds just let him loose and didn't bother giving him any direction. It's as though he thought Durning would know and understand how to play the character.
I was only 15 when I first saw this on initial release and had trouble relating or connecting with the characters in this film and was bored. Just didn't get the Durning character at all and he was the worst. Some of this would have been my age and the adult themes in this film and I appreciate it a little better now; but I feel that overall the film is either too dreary and leaden in parts, or then too overdone in others. No one is either really that likable or that interesting to want to care about what happens. Too cold and not enough soul or passion behind the proceedings.
A nice try a best for Reynolds, just not enough pizazz or excitement for this type of film for my tastes. Watch VICE SQUAD-82' instead.
we are the same age. i saw it at 15 too lol
i see your point.
in reference to what you said, i noticed a real spike in realism a good while after this film came out. around this time i noticed a lot of successful ones had pandering cheesy hints at melodrama. i can cite titles but, eh not necessary.
i guess what i'm saying is, that kind of overshooting like durning did here was more accepted then (by audiences and directors)
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"You are literally too stupid to insult."
"Thank you."
Hey LTUM,
I would actually be keen on hearing some of the other titles you were going to cite with the "spikes of realism", as you put it. It would refresh my memory on some of the golden oldies!
With Durning, Reynolds directed him again in STICK-86', in which he played the villain. He came across as a caricature in this too, with his red mop and overacting. I find STICK, probably more entertaining to watch than SHARKY'S MACHINE; but feel that SHARKY'S...' is the better film of the 2. I am not that sold on Reynold's as a director really. He had charm and charisma to boot and was appealing to both male and female audiences, but he probably should have let someone else direct this film. I can see what he was trying to do, with the noirish and voyeuristic feel and atmosphere of the film and somewhat succeeded.
rascal,
well said; caricature is just the word i was looking for! fits better than melodrama.
a while back i came up with the term 'spoon feeding' for severely affected acting/writing. or just 'bad acting' is probably accurate lol .....but yeah durning did display affectations from time to time. (i already pointed out how i can't stand rod steiger. how he gained so much respect i will never understand SMH)
and yes i remember the flame red wig in stick lmao it was awful. i agree with you on burt's directing; i suspect it was durning's idea to choose that red wig (though i didn't read the book so maybe that was written in there?) i have a theory about durning and burt, and i suspect i'm right:
ten years ago i was a huge dinner for five fan. favreau did a few episodes with burt reynolds, but one of the episodes was with burt and several older actors (durning and his contemporaries. i forget the other guys, but i remember durning and burt for sure). anyway, burt really kissed durning's butt the whole time. talked about his WWII service etc.... from the way burt talked to and about durning in that session you can see clearly burt had a serious hero worship thing with durning. just guessing here, but maybe that would be why burt let him do 'whatever' on set. IOW durning was allowed to make his own choices, some of them pretty vaudeville as we noted. (there's another term, lol)
(i can't criticise though. if i were to get to direct one of my heroes, i'd probably be speechless lol)
i agree with you about burt's directing. maybe he was trying to go with the trend of that time (eastwood, redford, stallone) to fit in? or maybe he got more money to direct and star? buy yeah i agree he woulda benefited from having another eye on set. i make films, and i can't even imagine trying to direct myself. i don't get how they do that.
i like sharky's for lots of reasons. burt is one. diehl is another. i'm a georgian and so i love anything atlanta. all that likely makes me biased. so i like it a lot, and i do think it cut new ground in some of the seedy parts of it, but i also acknowledge that other parts of it felt like a TV movie, the kind that came on abc in the late 70s.
spikes of realism:
i think i wasn't clear before: what i meant was, realism increased later.... i see a spike in realism around the mid 80s and after. (live and die in LA[85] manhunter[86] Heat[95,deniro/pacino], silence of the lambs[89], other titles in the 90s and beyond) .....these films had no traces, not one, of anything even approaching pandering or melodrama or affected lines from actors. by my assessment total realism from start to finish
(not to say there weren't cheesy movies in that period too! not saying that lol)
but what i mean is, realism was less real before around 85. yes the 70s saw an increase in realism, as is common knowledge. (any film fan knows) ...but still it was influenced by TV style IMO. hard to type about this, but would be easy to show with some clips to illustrate.
so that's what i mean about the police station scenes in sharky's machine. i feel like they were influenced by TV style filmmaking. one guy i saw somewhere once called it 'cognitive dissonance' when the viewer sees something in the film that is done unrealistically. like the gun shots in the old western movies. when watching those you never get the feeling they were really shooting at the people; you can 'feel' it's blanks lol.
(as opposed to reservoir dogs lol)
for example, yes the dirty harry movies were gritty and real. but then they' have these over the top villains saying lines that just aren't real, in writing or delivery. i recall the van of hippies in the enforcer, lol. surely that was an attempt to knock off the manson gang. so when a seventies film was realistic, it still would have little pockets of cheesy acting in certain scenes. i think this was due to the overlap of the eras; they weren't completely shedding the TV style at that point, so certain actors couldn't help it. in my mind, durning's performance qualifies as one of these lol
good talking to you. hit me back any time
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"You are literally too stupid to insult."
"Thank you."
...but maybe that would be why burt let him do 'whatever' on set. IOW durning was allowed to make his own choices,...
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Hey LTUM,
I feel you are pretty much on the money with your theory and what I commented on earlier about him not being reigned in: the histrionics and overplaying is so very obvious as to what Durning was doing in his performance.....or more reasonably; what Reynolds should have been doing and that is directing him. I like Charles Durning and to randomly pick a film from a different genre he made a year later, TOOTSIE-82' directed by Sydney Pollack, you can see a much more controlled and sincere performance; that proves Durning was at the top of his game as a character actor with a master helmsman to guide him.
Thanks for your thoughtful explanations as to what you meant and for your examples. I have seen all the films you mentioned and TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA-85, MANHUNTER-86', are 80's gems and I must revisit sometime. They were original and new in both style and approach, that later tv series have now adopted like CSI. It's like the movies started to influence TV for the better, rather than the other way round.
THE ENFORCER-76, is a pretty average and over the top Dirty Harry IMHO, compared to the gritty, yet heightened first installment and what is possibly an under-appreciated installment, a more polished and more epic Harry MAGNUM FORCE-73', in which I can't really recall any cheesy moments in this one at present, in regards to any villains or situations portrayed. It's been a while since viewed.
Cheers for the communication ;-)
I kind of felt he was told to over act, it came across as comedy relief and I was laughing my ass off at all of his parts. It was almost like he was in charge but he wasn't in charge so that's why all the yelling and freaking out was happening. Lol I still get a kick out of it and the movie has grown on me over the years.
share[deleted]
You don't know what you're talking about.
shareYou are right. He OVERACTS so badly, and he's such an otherwise great actor too.
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