Quick Cuts

By J-C.

THE KILLER ELITE. James Caan and Robert Duvall show up in this haywire thriller as a couple of gunmen in the employ of a private company that handles political dirty work. When first glimpsed, they are helping a political exile from south of the border get to a safe harbor in Europe. While Caan showers after the hard day's work, Duvall, in the other room, shoots the top off the exile's head. Then he takes the first step toward becoming a double agent by shooting Caan too--but only in the knee and arm.

These opening minutes of The Killer Elite are fast and savage, prime work by Director Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch). For most of the rest of the movie, however, his attention wanders. Eventually Caan is pressed back into special service, despite his handicaps. His bosses (Arthur Hill, Gig Young) want him to guard a crew of Asians. A second group of Asians wants to kill them. Got that? No, you don't. It is impossible to ascertain which group is which, why they are fighting, what they are doing in California, or why Peckinpah bothered with this movie in the first place. J.C.

THE BLACK BIRD. Time has changed Sam Spade's old neighborhood. Never much to begin with, it has become a ghetto, where dope is pushed openly and where the cops have grown even dimmer. Sam's old office is managed by his son. As played by George Segal, Junior has inherited his father's cynicism, but none of his mental agility or old-fashioned pride in craft. Indeed, young Sam hates the private-eye dodge and is willing to lie, cheat and steal to get out of it.

Thus when a lot of characters wander into his office, apparently from that 1941 movie classic The Maltese Falcon, the kid is willing to lister to their improbable tales and help them find the ugly old statuette of a "black bird" that they are still looking for. Some agreeable humor results from the confrontation between these time-trippers and Writer-Director David Giler's vision of the '70s as a great downer.

Despite a fairly steady stream of good little gags, The Black Bird does not really amount to much. It never develops the manic force of a Mel Brooks parody or the sly intelligence of Woody Allen's deft dips into the pocket of the past. The result is a pleasant movie that, a week or so later, one has to work hard to recall. Richard Schicke

HUSTLE. If you believe Burt Reynolds, he "never sees his sins" when he is with Catherine Deneuve. That is probably because hers keep him too busy. Burt, conducting himself with the sunny vulgarity of a defrocked talk-show host, plays a cop called Phil Gaines. He lives with a high-class hooker named Nicole Britton, portrayed by Deneuve with the forced charm of a free-spending tourist trying to clear customs. Phil frets quite a bit about Nicole's line of work. In fact he frets about almost everything.

Screenwriter Steve Shagan was also responsible for the script of Save the Tiger, Jack Lemmon's Oscar-winning vehicle of two years back. Like Lemmon, Reynolds is forced to reminisce fondly about the putative glories of eras past--ballplayers, bands, movies--and wrestle with a numbing dose of angst. Although Director Robert Aldrich (The Longest Yard) does all he can to enliven this turgid material with sleazy jokes, low-down sex and a little violence, he cannot manage to stifle Shagan's sermon. Aldrich is like a kid passing around a dirty magazine while the preacher drones on from the pulpit above. JC.

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