Nick Duffy is a bi-sexual disgraced ex-copper, turned freelance security consultant. His old beat was London’s Soho, which in 1980 was aggressively zoned for porno (books and cinema), prostitutes, peep shows and drugs. Nowadays all that stuff still exists, but it’s interspersed with fancy restaurants and TV production companies. Duffy gets involved in a case of extortion (presh in Soho slang), and is mixed up with colourful local criminals, as well as his ex-colleagues at the constabulary, one or more of whom may have fitted him up four years earlier, leading to the aforementioned disgrace. Throughout his adventures he indulges in all the delights Soho has to offer, except drugs - I’m pretty sure he’s too busy putting it about with anyone who’ll have him (or accept his money) to make time for some drug taking.

My copy of the book, printed in 1989, has a much less classy cover than the one shown here. It features a really poor drawing of a Polaroid picture on fire (I can only assume, having read the book - the image itself offers few clues), and the photo is encircled by a cheese wire with wooden handles. The back cover improves a little, with a blurb from Police World, a publication that is usually so sparing with its praise.

What I learned reading this book:

• If you’re getting a hand job from a stranger, keep your eyes open at all times.

That last Johnnie To film I saw made me want to see more, and if this one wasn’t as good it still made me want to see more yet. He uses the same cinematographer a lot - someone known variously as Siu-keung Cheng, Alan Cheng, Milo Cheng, Siu Hung Cheung, Cheng Siu Keung, Alan Cheng Siu-Keung and Milo Cheng Siu-Keung - and the guy seems amazing. The narrative stretches over the course of one night and as such the look is all levels of darkness, shadow and neon.

With Simon Yam again, who looks about three years older than he did twenty years ago.

What I learned from this film

Critics thought Eastwood’s cops were rendered minimalistically? Yam makes him look like Jim Carrey.

 What I learned watching this film:

• Pits of heavy oil are not conducive to child health.

I found the coda to this (where we’re told what happened to the characters played by Washington and Crowe) to be dumbfounding. I’m not sure what to make of it, although the fact that we’ve been treated to the sight of the two laughingly bonding over coffee in the police station (in a montage I found cringe-worthy) makes me fear that the movie is as morally confused as it appears to be. And I don’t think it’s a matter of “complexity” or “moral ambiguity”, either. Washington’s character is a murderer who gets rich exploiting (and increasing) the misery of Harlem, and — more damning, in dramatic terms — is basically uninteresting, both personally and in terms of motivation.

Crowe’s character and his motivation? You’ve got me. And while I don’t doubt the extent of corruption in the NYPD in those days in particular, I still thought it was clumsy to have every single character whom Crowe passes, after he’s turned in that money, glaring at him. Weren’t some of them honest? Weren’t a couple of them not scheduled to benefit from that money? Wouldn’t one or two choose not to broadcast their feelings? Didn’t someone have something else to do..? They’re in a NYC police station, for god’s sake, something else must have been going on.

Washington’s a magnetic performer, and this role’s no exception, but it’s really not much of a stretch. Maybe I’ve just gotten spoiled by his always being excellent.

• I wish Idris Elba had stuck around longer.
• Yet another movie with “Across 110th Street” on the soundtrack, and it always sounds bracing.
• With this coming on the heels of Planet Terror and No Country for Old Men, Josh Brolin has become one of my favorite character actors quick.

What I learned from this film

Capitalists who slam piano lids on people’s heads can be as dull as their Wall Street counterparts.

It’s also (thank god) sometimes funny.

• Some of the hall-of-mirrors / morphed identity / circular reference stuff (Laura Dern in the movie theater, or emerging onto the set from the back) was close to genius, some was at least eerily effective (the frisson of recognized dialogue from Mulholland Drive [or was it from that..? Maybe it was from earlier in this film] ), some was trite (”The Locomotion” annoyed me…has this scene been in half his films?)
• During my late-night viewing, I nodded off for about ten seconds during a very quiet scene and then almost had a heart attack when there was an incredibly loud electronic skrrrreeeeeeeeee howling from the soundtrack.
• When there was about 15 minutes left, I realized that there was no way there was going to be a “resolution” that “wrapped anything up”, so after a fairly grueling three hours (over two nights) I was ready for it to just end. Thus I got very annoyed at the fact that the movie continued right through the end credits crawl…I was ready to stop paying attention, and instead got dancers, a lumberjack and a Nina Simone song.

I don’t claim to know what Lynch is doing, but I have no doubt I’ll watch this again.

What I learned from watching this film

“There are consequences to one’s actions. And there certainly would be consequences to wrong actions. Dark they would be, and inescapable.”

Alison Lohman is far less successful as the journalist investigating the mystery, and the narrative suffers from whipsawing between multiple points of view /narrators /time frames.

Based on the novel by Rupert Holmes, whose songwriting credits include “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” and “Timothy” , a 1971 song that made it to #17 on the Billboard charts despite - or perhaps in part because of - being banned by many stations for its subject matter of cannibalism.

What I learned from this film

Sure, leave a beautiful corpse, but not where housekeeping will find it.

Best thing about it is his daughter Asia, whom I like more and more with each film. She’s got extraordinary presence and I think she takes huge chances, not least by playing things dead straight even when she’s in an absurd screenplay.

What I learned from this film

When the Rome police are interrogating you about the after-hours evisceration of your colleague in the museum, feel free to tell them about the “three deformed people” but keep the part about “the monkey” to yourself.

I haven’t watched many Hong Kong films (particularly genre films) for years, and this is the first one I’ve seen by Johnnie To in a long time. The sequel to a film, but it stands on its own and is very impressive. I wasn’t sure if the lack of gunfire was a stunt, or realistic - perhaps gun crimes are punished far more severely in HK - but that certainly doesn’t imply a lack of violence, which is horrendous and deliberately deglamorized.

The cinematography (and more than the cinematography) reminded me of The Godfather, which was clearly a strong influence.

Good acting all around; the only actor I knew was Simon Yam, still sporting one of the least reassuring smiles in film.

What I learned from this film

If your first instinct is to not try to become leader of your crime family? Go with your gut.

The fact that I can remember Baby Doll from these listings is a tribute to how it must have been getting re-released periodically as things loosened up in the 60’s. Apparently on its first release (1956) the archbishop of New York forbade Catholics to see it (from the pulpit of St. Patrick’s Cathedral!) and Jack Warner pulled it from circulation after only a week.

Plainly it still makes some people antsy…the DVD is rated R! I had thought Psycho was the earliest film to attain a Restricted rating but this has it beat by four years. And with no nudity, no sex, no violence, and no swearing! Plenty of innuendo and humidity, and a couple of offhand uses of “nigger” (not by a likable character), but still…

Elia Kazan directed from a Tennessee Williams screenplay and some of this is very funny. Eli Wallach is the Sicilian businessman who inserts himself between farmer Karl Malden and childlike wife Carroll Baker, and I’ve never seen Wallach having so much fun - you can see why, it’s a great role.

15 years down the road, all of the principals would be making giallos in Italy - Baker particularly was in numerous films as the imperiled blonde whose males are trying to kill her or drive her insane - but, sadly, not together.

When the Legion of Decency was dissolved in 1980, their very last flurry of condemnations included Dressed to Kill. De Palma must have cherished that.

What I learned from this film

Don’t let a Sicilian with a riding crop near your wife, particularly if you’ve yet to consummate the marriage.

What I learned from this film

More anecdotal evidence that bank robbery just doesn’t attract the best class of criminals.