Goldie Hawn, John Heard
In her film roles, at least, Hawn has shown a remarkable penchant for picking the wrong mate (The Sugarland Express, Private Benjamin). "I'm so lucky," she tells her latest husband (Heard) in Deceived. After all, she has a snazzy art-gallery job primping up priceless artifacts, she's nabbed a handsome museum curator and given birth to a lovely little girl.
Well, if you think Heard was a suspect husband and father in Home Alone, wait till you catch his act here. Suddenly a $4.5 million Egyptian necklace is missing, people start dying, and Hawn begins to wonder if she really knows the man she married.
Goldie is as beguiling as ever as she tracks down her husband's dark past with filaments of clues. Alas, her fans will miss her trademark hiccuping laugh. The film misses it, too, as Deceived veers uneasily from mystery to horror. Alfred Hitchcock understood the difference as well as the need for humor to relieve tension. Director Damian (The Rachel Papers) Harris lacks the master's deft hand. But who doesn't? Deceived is worth seeing, if only to watch Hawn and Heard spar. It's ultimately the underrated Heard's performance that propels the film; he is one of those rare actors (like, say, Ed Harris) whose open, corn-fed face can reflect good or evil with imperceptible shades of adjustment. (PG-13)
Joe Pesci, Vincent Gardenia
Pesci, the Oscar-winning psychotic killer in GoodFellas, plays a young man cursed to learn his father's trade at his father's feet. That trade? Slumlord. "What do you look for in a building?" asks Pop (Vincent Gardenia) rhetorically, answering, "Death, divorce and devastation." Then comes the kicker. "What do you do with a building?" Answer: "Nothing."
Pesci learns his lessons well. When he inherits his first Harlem apartment building—a jackal's lair of broken pipes and crumbling ceilings—he ignores with a snarl the pleas of his tenants for the addition of heat and electricity and the subtraction of rats. He also ignores summonses from the Housing Authority until a dogged lawyer, Madolyn Smith Osborne, hauls him into court. His sentence: 120 days in one of his own apartments.
Pesci quickly gets to know the neighborhood. "Why do they call him the Milkman?" he inquires about a local worthy. The shrugging reply: "Because he killed a milkman." His tenants aren't really evil, though, just bad—and definitely out to see that Pesci gets a whopping dose of his own indigestible medicine. Like Scrooge in the graveyard, he gets a hard look at the conditions he's wrought; within 24 hours he's ready to throw in the dirty towel, even if it means a well-placed bribe. "When are you going to get me out of here?" he pleads with his father. "The rats have their own Jacuzzis!" Pop's sympathetic answer: "As soon as your mother and I get back from the Bahamas."
With that, Pesci sets off on a series of harrowing, howlingly funny rounds with his new neighbors. Whether getting himself conned into a three-on-three basketball game or lured into a party where he rocks to rap with the best on the block, Pesci carries Super on a tide of cunning wit and comic verve. True, his ferociously engaging performance owes a serious debt to Danny DeVito, right down to his slope-shouldered shuffle and even his character's name, Louie. But Pesci goes beyond Taxi-driven antics to give the film—risky business at best—a savage social bite. The tenants get their revenge, and Pesci is redeemed.
Still, The Super doesn't need a mantle of social conscience any more than the late Lenny Bruce did (though director Rod Daniel, to his considerable credit, really did shoot in Harlem and leave the apartment building restored). Anyway, it's doubtful that The Super will cause any slumlord to heed the suggestion made by the kid (Kenny Blank) who follows Pesci around: "If you fixed this place up, we'd be happier—and you'd be happier too." The film is simply a low-down, upbeat masterpiece because Pesci, like Bruce, is the kind of comic genius who grabs an audience by the neck and shakes it till everyone is reduced to hysterical rubble. (R)
Hector Elizondo, Robert Loggia
Note: This appraisal will contain no football metaphors (e.g. performances not quite crossing goal lines, an actor penalized 15 yards for holding Kathy Ireland, etc.). Suffice it to say that Necessary Roughness is not particularly rough and is certainly not necessary. It was directed by Stan Dragoti, whose principal credit is a previous marriage to model Cheryl Tiegs, which may explain why swimsuit favorite Ireland is playing a placekicker here. The movie is really one of the many illegitimate grandchildren of the antique Marx Brothers comedy Horse Feathers (1932). That is, the geeks get to take over the football team.
This being the '90s, there is a dollop of verisimilitude about all this nonsense; i.e., the Texas State Armadillos must make do with castoffs and walk-ons because they've been placed on NCAA probation for massive recruiting violations. Coaching the armorless Armadillos are (thankfully) two topflight actors, Elizondo and Loggia, who give the movie at least a touch of school spirit. Elizondo summons a gung ho prospect from the ROTC and asks, "Son, are you all that you can be?" The lad shouts back, "Yes, sir!" Elizondo then muses, "Well, it's a little too much."
So is the movie—especially for moms and dads dragged by their subteens to witness this subhuman exercise. At least parents can enjoy the coaches' byplay, guest shots to the jaw by a squad of former NFL greats (Ed "Too Tall" Jones, Ben Davidson and Tony Dorsett, among others), plus Scott Bakula, the handsomest thirtysomething quarterback since Warren (Heaven Can Wait) Beatty and, yes, Ireland, the most gorgeous non-Balkan place-kicker in football history. (PG)
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
