16. “The Big Bounce” (1969)
Though he’d been writing for over a decade and had already been adapted to the screen several times, “The Big Bounce” was the novel that set up the template for much of what we think of as the archetypal Elmore Leonard story — his first full-length contemporary crime story, it features much of the quirkiness, double-crosses, femme fatales, and everything that’s come to figure into his best known work. It’s not his most fully realized effort, but on the page, it’s a lot of fun and it’s not surprising that it’s come to the screen twice. As we’ve seen already, the recent Owen Wilson-starring version was a misfire, but unfortunately, the 1969 original was nearly as problematic. Moved from the Michigan setting of the novel to California, it stars Ryan O’Neal as Jack Ryan, with the “Love Story” actor’s then-wife Leigh Taylor-Young as Nancy, James Daly as the villainous Ray Ritchie, Van Helfin in the Morgan Freeman part of the local judge, and Lee Grant, the best thing in the movie, as a tragic local single-mother, a part excised completely from the remake. The two films are an interesting case-study, because they each miss the mark, in entirely different ways — if you were somehow able to combine them, you might somehow get close to something pretty good. Whereas Wilson is as winning as ever in the 2004 version, O’Neal is charmless and unpleasant. Whereas Sara Foster’s Nancy is a virtual non-entity, Taylor-Young is magnetic (if a bit shrill in the closing stages). Whereas the recent film takes nothing seriously, the ’69 take is dour and cynical. The one thing the two versions share (other than hideous scores — in this case, sub-Beach Boys surf-guitar stuff) — they’re incredibly dull, with no real sense of urgency or any real attempt to capture Leonard’s voice. Maybe another filmmaker would be able to get it right third time around, but history at this point suggests that they’d be unwise to try. [D]
15. “Stick” (1985)
As far as directorial debuts from a figure such as Burt Reynolds go, 1981’s “Sharky’s Machine” wasn’t a bad effort — a tough and watchable crime flick that showed the perm-tached 1970s megastar had some talent behind the camera. Elmore Leonard‘s “Stick,” could have been a decent follow-up. Reynolds directed (working from a script by Leonard and “Sudden Impact” writer Joseph Stinson) and starred in the movie, but it coincided with the his creative and commercial decline and has deservedly been swiftly forgotten. Burt plays the title role, a car thief just out of the prison who gets embroiled in a drug swap with an old friend, only to see his pal double-crossed and murdered. Lying low, he takes a job as a driver for an eccentric movie producer (George Segal) while romancing a financier (Candice Bergen) and seeks vengeance on the men behind the death of his friend, drug dealer Chucky (Charles Durning) and the sinister, voodoo-employing Nestor (Castulo Guerra). The film was a tumultuous production; delayed for a year, heavily re-shot at Universal‘s behest to add more action, and denounced by Leonard as a result. And that’s part of the problem; there’s little of Leonard’s spirit in there, not much in the way of wit and smarts, to the extent that it feels, more than anything, like the kind of Jason Statham movie that disappears from theaters in two weeks. But studio interference can’t take the whole blame as there’s plenty of poorly thought-out decisions in here to lay at the director/star’s door, from an ill-advised hair-metal wig for Durning’s villain, to Segal’s shrill comic relief performance, to the creepily incestuous vibe between Reynolds and his teen daughter. It’s better than “Be Cool” and its ilk by being somewhat watchable, but it’s still an immensely forgettable effort. [D+]
14. “Killshot” (2009)
This adaptation of one of Leonard’s best-loved novels was a long, long time coming. Initially optioned (alongside “Bandits” and “Freaky Deaky“) by Miramax for Quentin Tarantino after “Pulp Fiction,” produced by his partner Lawrence Bender, and initially intended to be “Presented” by QT (he took his name off the film), “Killshot” was in development forever, but finally came to the screen under the unlikely direction of “Shakespeare In Love” helmer John Madden, who started shooting in 2005. Taking four years to make it to the screen, the film was beset by post-production issues, heavy re-shoots, and behind-the-scenes feuding. When it did arrive finally, it wasn’t a huge surprise that the movie was a mess. Mickey Rourke (post-“Sin City” comeback, though the film was released on the tail of his Oscar-nominated turn in “The Wrestler“) toplines as Blackbird, a half-Native American hitman who, teamed with the reckless Richie (a greasy, kind of terrible Joseph Gordon-Levitt), target a married couple (the pleasantly-rhyming duo of Diane Lane and Thomas Jane) who’ve gone into the witness protection program. You sense that there’s a good film, or at least a half-decent one, tucked somewhere in here: Rourke in particular is strong, giving a nice sense of melancholy to the picture, and it’s handsomely shot by the great Caleb Deschanel. But the script (by future “Drive” writer Hossein Amini), at least in the form it takes on screen, takes forever to get going and grinds to a halt every time Lane and Jane’s blander-than-bland leads come center-stage. Ultimately, it’s not a film that’s especially bad (Gordon-Levitt’s performance aside) on a scene-by-scene basis, but as a whole, it’s turgid and, frankly, boring. [C-]
