westernone It would seem that this film would be banking on residual affection for the action spy series of the sixties, "I SPY", where Culp and Cosby played bright, funny pals that joked and wisecracked their way through the cloak-and-dagger adventures. But here, they make no attempt to revive that devil-may-care camaraderie, and apparently thinking they needed to be taken seriously as action stars, play nothing for laughs. They don't kid around at all, in fact they never even smile or get emotional one way or another. They're sullen and tired and cynical with none of the chemistry that worked so well before.It's not like they're hostile to each other, more like indifference, like somebody you work with, but never have any personal stake in. Maybe they thought these characters would be more realistic, but the fantastic situations are not. Several times big exploding catastrophes take place in what should be very public places, yet no one's around. The plot is convoluted and unexciting. Ifyou went in because you liked Cup and Cosby, you'll be disappointed in this downer.

Robert J. Maxwell Bill Cosby is Hickey and Robert Culp is Boggs, two partners in a run-down Los Angeles private detective agency. They're swept up in a battle between two gangs over a stash of half a million dollars. The police hate the two private eyes because, as they investigate the case, dead bodies start turning up. A climactic shoot out on the beach involves two airplanes. The protagonists are the only survivors.It's a confusing and twisted story, hard to follow, but the frustration is relieved by occasional minor that have some originality. Director Culp doesn't always give us a head-on shot of what's happening, but shows us the reaction of others so that we know anyway. And there is some humor, understated like the rest of the story.Example of comic incident. Culp has been torturing himself by visiting the club where his divorced wife is a go-go dancer. He still loves her, while she enjoys seeing him in pain. "Eat your heart out," she sneers while uncoiling her hips towards him. Cosby drags him out, drunk, and takes him to a used car dealer to buy a car. The barely sober Culp reels to the nearest dented auto, clicks some switches on and off, and asked the smiling salesman, "How's it run?" Salesman: "Terrific." The salesman has his cigar almost back in his mouth but Culp instantly replies, "I'll take it," and the cigar is halted in mid-lift while the salesman gapes.The two men pack .44 magnums in the last half of the movie, but, alas, they don't have the panache of Dirty Harry's Big Gun, which appeared a year earlier, nor do they make thunderous sounds or give any evidence of recoil when fired. They look like pea-shooters with extra-long barrels.The fact that the story is almost too complicated to follow needn't be the kiss of death. Raymond Chandler was notorious and yet some of his work has been turned into winners. The thing is that Chandler usually had a narrator, Philip Marlowe, given to crude literary tropes: "Her hair was the color of gold in old paintings." Or, "My bank account could have crawled under a duck's belly." "Hickey and Boggs" has no narrator and, lacking a compelling plot, must be carried along by its performances and its atmosphere, a little like "Chinatown," but it doesn't pull it off. Both Hickey and Boggs seem exhausted and sweaty. Cosby and Culp work well together but their dialog lacks drama. They'd worked together for years on a TV series, "I Spy." There's nothing notable about the milieu either. The set dressings are no more than functional. The exteriors have only occasional scenes that hint at the summer heat and noise of Los Angeles -- the cars whizzing by on the freeways, the houses perched on cliffs, the ubiquitous Cal Worthington commercials on television.In the end, after a nihilistic pronouncement, the two men walk away from the carnage with shoulders slumped. The viewer knows how they feel.

inspectors71 In the grand scheme of movie things, there are probably a million movies that will be considered better than Hickey and Boggs, but this almost-missed 1972 crime drama that reunites Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, the two stars of the popular TV series, I Spy, has more than enough golden flecks to justify looking for it on Amazon.Al Hickey (Cosby) and Frank Boggs (Culp) are two down-on-their-luck private dicks who share the honors of being fired by the LAPD and having very little to fall back upon . Although the plot sounds hopelessly clichéd (the loot from a bloody armored car robbery resurfaces in LA, and a melting-pot of gangster/corporate suits, black revolutionaries, Mexican immigrants, murderous-but-not- brilliant hit-men, and hysterically angry detectives come after the all-but-divorced Hickey and the alcoholic, pole-dancer-addicted Boggs) screenwriter Walter Hill and director Culp make the viewer care about these two lost and lonely working stiffs who used to be proud, but who are now desperately threadbare.I Spy was light and fluffy. Hickey and Boggs bombed at the box office because viewers were expecting a more of the same, a dramedy, but there's damned little humor in this film. Yet, the performances of and the chemistry between Bill Cosby and Robert Culp are so very believable that the audience is left jittery from the suspense of where and how the "torpedoes" will strike again. On a personal level, Hickey's marriage to the beautiful Rosalind Cash is a shambles, and Boggs has all but given up fighting his addictions to booze, girls, and mid-sixties Ford Thunderbirds.It's so palpable, so frantic for these men as they try to make a buck, defend themselves from the baddies and the goodies, and get past the professional and personal chaos they have helped to create.There is an excruciating moment when Hickey's mother-in-law, the always watchable Isabel Sanford, stands on the porch of her daughter's house, the site of the latest "torpedo" attack, and verbally disembowels Cosby--while Cosby's daughter desperately tries to keep her sanity by mowing the lawn--and you can't quite hear Sanford's anguished, angry voice over the highway noise. The look of defeat on Cosby's face is his character writ small.Meanwhile, Culp sits in a strip club, destroying his liver, and is almost in tears as a dancer with dead eyes flirts with him. Like Cosby, he is alone and vanquished. Even the strippers don't care.Although the ending is stolidly predictable, the viewer is relieved to see that there is some hope for Al and Frank. There is a lot of shooting, with everyone from the Panther-types to a thoroughly vicious Michael Moriarty either eviscerated or burned to a crisp. They walk off down the beach, slogging through the sand, and, hopefully, they will find a way to repair their lives.Yeah, Hickey and Boggs is an artsy downer, but, as I said before, there are enough moments of style and substance in this underestimated film noir to make it both watchable and, to the patient viewer, emotionally accessible. There is a line in Hickey and Boggs, after a nasty firefight in the LA Coliseum, where Culp, instead of saying something pithy or sarcastic about the torpedoes, simply fumes, "I gotta get a bigger gun. I can't hit a damned thing."That's a little gold fleck right there.

zetes Hickey & Boggs is not entirely successful - in fact, it has some major flaws - but it creates a powerful mood, and that's what makes it worthwhile. I will remember it, for a long time perhaps. In similar cases, the flaws will gradually fade from my mind and the film will seem better in my memory. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that the next time I watch the film (I had to get it on tape) the flaws will again be too big to ignore. The biggest fault is the film's editing. It's awful. I can't remember any other film where the quality of editing was such a big issue, but this is definitely one of them. Take, for instance, the shoot-out at the football stadium. The setup, where they cut to the various people involved in the proceedings, is very confusing and almost silly. You can't, for instance, tell where people are in relation to each other. When the action starts to go down, it should be quite exciting. Unfortunately, again, the editing never makes it clear where the characters are in relation to each other. It's even difficult at times to tell who's shooting at whom. Near the end of the sequence, we see one character run past another who has been guarding him with his machine gun. I had thought that the second man had been shooting at both him and Hickey. I could then finally tell what had been going on, but that doesn't help generate the past suspense and logic that that scene needed. The editing is also very quick, especially in the film's first half. It makes the story difficult to follow. Luckily, the editing gets better as the film progresses, but it's never perfect. Surely the editor deserves a lot of the blame - he clearly didn't have much of an idea what he was doing - but Robert Culp is partly culpable (ha-ha) as well. The editor is not the only culprit (there I go again) in that aforementioned stadium shoot-out. Part of the confusion is due to sloppy direction. Most of his direction is quite good, however. Some of it is downright excellent. This was his one and only film. Imagine how much better he could have gotten.The script is also quite sloppy. Again, a lot of the confusion is due to the editing. Many scenes happen too quickly. But, on the script's side of the scale, I was never 100% sure who the different groups were. By the end, I was mostly sure, but there was still a bit of confusion. I would compare Hickey & Boggs greatly with Chinatown, which was made two years later. But unlike Chinatown, which also has a very intricate mystery story, Hickey & Boggs is never able to make sense out of the whole story. We shouldn't still be trying to figure out what has happened or who certain characters were when the end credits begin to roll. I also think that the film has a few too many P.I. movie cliches. Even Hickey's family situation, which is where the film gets most of its emotional power, is rather formulaic. Hickey is the type of guy who's too into his job, and his wife's angry at him all the time; Hickey still loves his wife and child, but he's not the greatest father (they actually develop his poor fatherly skills quite well). I would also have wanted more backstory to Boggs, although I kind of like the way the screenplay only hints at his life. They also needed to invest a little more emotional pull in the characters of Mary Jane and her husband. They tried, but didn't quite succeed. Just think of how powerful their last scene would be if we knew them a little better.Now for the acting. The supporting cast is generally adequate, with one exception (a good one): James Woods. It was his second feature film, and he's already showing how great an actor he would become. His character is created rather sloppily, but he's still good in the role. Of course, Culp and Cosby are the main focus of the film. Culp, despite the fact that he directed, is actually more of the supporting actor. He's quite good, although, like I said, I wish that he had a more in-depth part. Cosby, on the other hand, is exquisite. I would doubt that he's ever had a better role in his life. His dramatic prowess is amazing, and he has several masterful scenes where his job is to remain rather emotionless, thereby multiplying the emotional effectiveness. It works wonders, and he should probably have been recognized for the performance.As for other aspects of the film, the cinematography, by Wilmer Butler, is quite beautiful. He does a great job of bringing out the inherent darkness of sunny L.A. He also does a lot of magic hour stuff, and it is quite beautiful. I especially like the final shot. The musical score should be mentioned as well. Ted Ashford's score is very evocative, and it doesn't fall into the cheesier, Shaft-type funk, which I was expecting. George Edward's theme song is also very good. Also, the sound effects are great. That's odd to point out, but you'll definitely be influenced by some of them. Sometimes, sirens, like tornado sirens, arise out of nowhere and no one on screen aknowledges them. At other times, you'll hear this spooky, unembodied laughter. It's very disturbing. Overall, I give Hickey & Boggs an 8/10. It should have been better, it could have been an equal to Chinatown. It is still a very worthwhile film that ought to be more available and more famous.