Subject: The Cop and the Girl
I was expecting such dregs from this that I ended up thinking it was halfway decent... but really, deep down I know better.
Hey, is there any such thing as Cute Film Noir? Well, there is now.
This thing had a strong Killing Cars flavor to it, but was much more watchable. It was also Old Home Week with the backgammon hustler from Killing Cars and the bar owner from Kill Cruise in attendance.
Prochnow and his partner (the bar owner - I have no idea what his name is) [Franz Buchrieser - ed.] are jerky cops who do things like sit in their car, watch two schmucks try to kill each other in an alley, and make a bet on who will win instead of trying to break it up. Prochnow loses the bet and one of the schmucks dies.
Then Prochnow reluctantly gets mixed up with an 18-year old girl, saving her from three attackers (and waiting much too late to interfere - he almost didn't do it at all). During the fight all his stuff spills out on the floor. The girl picks up his gun and car keys and disappears. So he goes after her.
You already know how the rest of the movie goes, up to the finale anyway, so I won't bother with details. They fall in love, end up on the run together, and they both get killed. It's so sweet.
He also has an ex-wife who's a marvelous singer (she does "Fever"), and you should see her. This is as close as we're ever going to get to having Jürgen in a movie with Marlene, Marlene, Marlene.
Critical stats: one potful of liquid dye in the face; one dunking in a lake; one dripping-wet after having dived back into the same lake later, though you don't get to see the dive; one soaking from being caught in a rainstorm; one wash-up in a sink. If you want to be charitable you can also include the splattered-with-car-grease scene.
There's one bit that's so good I hate to give it away, but I have to. The first time these two lie down together she says, "Boy, your armpits stink."
Don't you miss the 80's? They should have made more movies back then.
What can I say? It at least rates a Solid Ten on the "Greasy Inarticulate Bastard Fixing His Car in His Filthy Boxer Shorts o'Meter".
So. About this COP'n'GIRL. I only have one question. Do EUROPEANS understand these movies? Really? Or is it just us? Is it the badly butchered form they arrive in, or are they as nonsensical as they seem?
What did Our Grungy Hero see in that Snot-Nosed Brat anyway? (OK. Two questions). I mean, she's a whiner, not THAT great looking, although the conveniently FASHIONABLE BOB provided by her thug friends improved her somewhat. What was she so illegally guilty of, anway, to be hunted down like that? Did I miss something?? (Three questions. Or four). I mean, was it only about bopping those border guards on the melon? Which border was that, anyhoooo?? (Five questions?). I must have missed something, I swear. It was heatstroke.
Why did they deliberately film her with her forelock hanging just so and the blood/smudge under her nose in exactly the shape of Hitler's mustache in the shack? Why is Jurgen's ex-wife's pasty new husband in the business of supplying the Our Surly Hero with fine sportscars to wreck at will? Why do Europeans think a night out watching synchronized swimmers backed with bad cocktail music is a classy time? What did Jurgen do that was SOOO bad that he needed the tar whupped out of him by his fat cop pal, other than fall for a kvetching dope without a brain in her head? Why was that skinny blond weasel (from KILLING CARS??) nestled in Jurgen's other "smelly armpit?" like all of a sudden everybody's best buds when they were on the lam? What is the deep statement on the human condition that we are to infer from watching these three inarticulate boneheads fly through the air with the greatest of ease in a non-functional bathroom?
Why don't any of these Euro-screenwriting hacks know that dyin' real stoopid doesn't suddenly elevate a real stoopid character to anything other than exactly what you'd think you'd get when you add zwei und zwei, which is a real stoopid character, dyin' real stoopid?
How many questions is that????