Robert J. Maxwell Actually, a minor but diverting film about marginally alcoholic ex-cop Jeff Bridges, now a private investigator, who is hired by hooker Alexandra Paul to protect her. He fails. She dies.He spends the rest of the film tracking down her killers with the reluctant help of Paul's pimp, Randy Brooks, and one of Paul's stable mates, Roseanna Arquette. He soon links the killing to Latino drug boss Andy Garcia, who killed Paul in an attempt to protect his means of smuggling cocaine into the country. The plot's a bit complicated but that's about all you need to know, going in.Bridges is an interesting actor. He usually brings something extra to each of his roles, but here, with his dark mustache and the chronic temptation to booze it up again, he seems to hold back. Not that he does a poor job, just that he's been more inventive in other roles.Alexandra Paul doesn't last long. Too bad because there's an engaging scene in which she gets stoned on coke and examines her pudendum in the light from a refrigerator. She's not a bravura actress. Neither is Roseanna Arquette, with her little-girl's voice, but Arquette exhibits some over-sized features of face and figure. She has a bosom with authority, for one thing, and large lips and incisors that are at the same time inviting and frightening. Andy Garcia is always a presence on screen. He's terribly slick. But Randy Brooks as the pimp is stuck with a one-dimensional part. There are several subordinate thugs and assorted goons who are mainly around to gin up the body count.Hal Ashby has directed some interesting stuff before, but here he allows -- or seems to allow -- his actors to improvise long talky scenes, mainly arguments. Garcia really picks up the ball and runs with it. Everybody is addressed as "man" or "baby." Sometimes the calumny reaches majestic proportions just before it all explodes. At other time, like near a stadium or in Garcia's flamboyant, Gaudi-designed house, it leads only to anti-climax. The final shoot out in an unusual location is de rigueur.It's not insulting. Nothing blows up, No heads are wrenched off. Blood is minimal. It's absorbing in its own way since it pretends to be nothing more than what it is -- no "Chinatown," just another routine private-eye thriller.

Michael_Elliott 8 Million Ways to Die (1986) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Ashby's final theatrical film (which he was also fired from) is part thriller, part crime/drama, part love story but all the way mess. In the film Jeff Bridges plays Matt Scudder, a former cop who was let go from the force due to his drinking problem. He's asked by a prostitute for help but she soon ends up dead so Matt tries to find out who killed her. Everything points to a drug dealer (Andy Garcia) but Matt is able to get the hooker (Rosanna Arquette) that he's in love with in hopes to bringing down the entire racket. In many ways this thing plays out as a modern day noir but if you pick up any film book it's doubtful you're going to find a positive review. In fact, the three books I own each rate this as a BOMB, which I think is a bit unfair. Sure, this movie is a complete mess that at times appears to be three movies rolled into one but this thing is certainly never boring. I'm not sure when Ashby was actually fired but that might have something to do with the overall strange nature of this film. It starts off pretty much as a cop drama but then we get bits and pieces of a love story. We've also got the theme of alcoholism that is constantly being brought up as Bridges is fighting his demons. We then get all sorts of subplots including the drug dealer being in love with the hooker who just happens to have her own demons from her father leaving her as a child. There are all sorts of issues with the screenplay, which is a little surprising since Oliver Stone was one of the writers. I'm not sure how much of his original screenplay actually got filmed but in many ways this thing is a cocaine-warped nuthouse much like SCARFACE. It's funny that both films deal with cocaine and that both have one strange sequence after another. As bad as the screenplay is here you still can't take you eyes off the screen for several reasons. I thought the performances were rather good even if they're constantly being letdown by the material. Bridges was born to play a role like this and manages to turn in a very good performance as the former cop down on his luck and getting in over his head. Garcia is a lot of fun as well and he gets to shout and go off a few times like Pacino did in SCARFACE. We've got Arquette doing a fine job as the hooker with the heart of gold and Randy Brooks is fine as Bridges' friend. The actual mystery of who killed the original hooker is what the film goes on yet it's never really played out in the end as we switch gears to the second hooker. We even get an opening sequence where Bridges gets in trouble for shooting an unarmed man yet the man was beating an officer with a bat but no one ever mentions this as Bridges is getting nailed for it. All of the madness leads up to an even crazier ending with all our main people inside a warehouse full of cocaine, which Bridges keeps setting on fire, one kilo at a time. What falls just continues the crazy ways. I'm not sure if footage was cut out or if some sort of longer version could be put together but while watching the movie it's clear certainly things are either missing or perhaps everything was just thrown together poorly. Either way, this is a mess from start to finish but it's never boring.

tieman64 Hal Ashby, cinema's great wounded heart, directs "8 Million Ways To Die". It's a conventional film, but one must remember that at this stage in his career, Ashby had little or no creative control. He was a recovering alcoholic and drug user, and the studio's lack of faith in him resulted in "8 Million Ways to Die" being taken taken away during post production.Of course when the producers took this film away the moment it reached the cutting room, they effectively shot themselves in the foot. Ashby, who cut his teeth as a film editor, is renowned for his perfectionism in the editing room. He's a master editor. And so no surprise that "8 Million" received a limited release and faded from theatres days later.Still, though conventional, "8 Million" is nevertheless a fine film. A cosy neo-noir, it also features a somewhat autobiographical subplot regarding alcohol abuse. Here Jeff Bridges plays your typical noir detective, but like Ashby, his character is a recovering alcoholic. As a result, there's an honesty to a couple of Bridges' dialogue scenes. One conversation, for example, has Jeff talking to a hooker. He talks about his love for his daughter (whom he hasn't seen in years) and his hatred of being a drunk. The hooker replies that she never knew her father because he was a drunkard who never came home. Ashby shoots the scene to imply that Jeff is looking into his future, our hero a wounded old man looking at both his own daughter and the very outcome of his present alcoholism.There are two or three good scenes like this, but for the most part the film's script has been edited down to your standard cops and bad guys movie. One senses that had Ashby been at the editing desk, a more free-form movie would have resulted.Still, the film begins and ends with two very unique scenes. It's introduction, for example, features a long helicopter shot which tracks across an American super-highway, Ashby's camera framing distant automobiles like elevator carts, watching as they rise bizarrely off into the sky. The film ends, meanwhile, with an unusual three-way Mexican stand off. Ashby draws this scene out to painful lengths, everyone yelling and screaming until their demands reach pathetic proportions. We've seen this scene before in countless other action movies, but none of these flicks have done anything quite like this.7.9/10 - Moments of Ashby's personality and sensibilities shine through, but for the most part, this film has been hacked down by the studios into something slight. For Ashby completists only.

trudylyn The locations alone are magnificent. The acting is sloppy, unpredictable and right in your face. The actors give performances that will sit on their resumes forever. The plot is goofy, draggy and ultimately unnecessary to your enjoyment. Jeff rules as a lost man caught off guard who fights back with his brain.I love this movie because it stood out among the pile of straight-to-cable trash that ruled the mid-eighties. Some of the scenes between Garcia and Bridges are absolutely horrifying in their intensity. It's not a detective movie. It's not really a drama, nor a thriller. It's more of a movie movie. I don't think Lawrence Block has anything to be ashamed of. I've seen "Burglar", where the location is changed, and the sex and color of his hero are switched. As Larry McMurtry once said, when asked if he liked what Hollywood had done to his books, "If they spell your name right on the check, then their writing serves your writing well."