The Richard Matheson Blogathon – Loose Cannons (1990)

This is my first of two reviews for the The Richard Matheson Blogathon being run by Debbie over at Moon in Gemini and Rich at Wide Screen World.

Tnx guys for letting me take part!

–
“This place looks like an explosion in a dairy.” – Mac

Number of Times Seen – 1 (7 Mar 2019)

Brief Synopsis – Two mismatched detectives are given a case where they must uncover why a group of people who saw a rare video have been murdered.

My Take on it – This is a film that I recall hearing about when it came out nearly 30 years ago, but never really had much desire to watch.

The pairing of Gene Hackman and Dan Aykroyd is strange in and of itself since the two of them are very diverse kinds of actors and it’s hard to imagine a film that manages to incorporate the talents of both of them effectively.

This film doesn’t succeed in doing so and the mismatched pairing of these great actors is part of this films downfall.

The story makes very little sense and is actually quite silly due to the way things are presented.

Hackman is wasted ion the title role because he dioesn’t work as the “straight” man in a comedy team.

Aykroyd’s character is all over the place which hurts this film also.

The one bright spot tho is the use of Aykroyd’s talent for impressions because those are the only real highlights of this film and in some instances are amazing to watch despite the rest of this film being horrendous.

The story itself is paced very awkwardly which also hurts things along the way because things are much too strange.

Nancy Travis and Ronny Cox are also wasted here in supporting roles and could have been put to much better use.

This film is much too boring and strange and the biggest issue is the fact that it believe sit is much more clever than it truly is.

Bottom Line – Terrible film that makes so little sense and is extremely silly. Hackman is wasted here in the title role. The only nice part of this film is the performance of Aykroyd which due to his amazing impressions makes things funny despite everything around it feels totally useless. The story moves in very strange ways and the pacing is done really poorly. Travis and Cox are both great actors, but they too are misused in this really boring and strange film which tries to be much more clever than it truly is.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – In May 2013, an employee at the Calgary, Alberta landfill discovered some film negative in the mounds of trash. He looked closer, and found images of a man kneeling over a gruesome murder victim. Thinking it could be evidence of a crime, he submitted the negatives to the Calgary Police Services. After a short investigation, they recognized Dan Aykroyd, and contacted his agent for information, finally concluding that it was simply a discarded negative of Loose Cannons. The investigation was immediately closed, and everyone had a good laugh. Aykroyd jokingly told TMZ: “The movie should have been left in the landfill where it belongs.” (From IMDB)

Rating – Razzie Worthy (2/10)