Rushes

STICK

The defects people have come to know and love in Elmore Leonard's crime fiction are painfully apparent in the adaptation of Stick, which he has written with Joseph C. Stinson: lots of plotting, but no compelling narrative drive; plenty of characterological tics, but no characters whom one really cares for. In the title role, Burt Reynolds has somehow mislaid that cheeky brightness that is the basis of his stardom. His performance is so muted it is sometimes hard to hear his lines, and he has directed the film in the same torpid spirit. This story of an ex-con whose moral code imposes on him a mission of revenge among the drug traffickers around Miami is lazy, dull and told in imagery as murky as its underlying morality.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

This is the story of how a glumly harassed studio executive (Walter Matthau), a clinically depressed screenwriter (Charles Grodin) and a frenetic director (Bill Macy) try earnestly to make a movie that "says something" true and < beautiful about love and sex. Since this is exactly the kind of project no one wants anymore, the trio finally fails. Having hung around Hollywood and learned a few things, all three actors offer well-observed and rather sympathetic portrayals of these familiar types. Actor-Producer Grodin's script is anecdotally acute but a little unfocused, and it is not especially well served by William Asher's muzzy direction. Steve Martin's guest appearance as an aging Latin lover is emblematic of the whole movie: it is a nice idea not as well executed as it could have been. Still, if Movers and Shakers could have been better, it could have been worse and less agreeable than it is.

LADYHAWKE

Their faces were so noble, their souls so pure, their love so strong, that in 13th century France they just about had to be cursed. And so they were: Etienne of Navarre (Rutger Hauer) is transformed into a wolf each night; the lady Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer) must become a hawk by day. Always together, eternally apart, these two ironic superheroes have a mediating companion, the impish cutpurse Phillipe (Matthew Broderick again). Not a bad premise for a wistful romance, especially when it stars three such appealing actors. Alas, the script (by Edward Khmara, Michael Thomas and Tom Mankiewicz) jumbles modern slang with chivalric sentiment; and Director Richard Donner (The Omen, Superman) is no spellbinder of medieval melancholy. "I believe in miracles," says the evil bishop (John Wood) who laid on the curse. "It's part of my job." Making miracles is Donner's job--and, Dick, you're fired.