Of course when the producers took this film away the moment it reached the cutting room, they effectively shot themselves in the foot. Ashby, who cut his teeth as a film editor, is renowned for his perfectionism in the editing room. He's a master editor. And so no surprise that "8 Million" received a limited release and faded from theatres days later. Still, though conventional, "8 Million" is nevertheless a fine film. A cosy neo-noir, it also features a somewhat autobiographical subplot regarding alcohol abuse.
Here Jeff Bridges plays your typical noir detective, but like Ashby, his character is a recovering alcoholic. As a result, there's an honesty to a couple of Bridges' dialogue scenes. One conversation, for example, has Jeff talking to a hooker. He talks about his love for his daughter whom he hasn't seen in years and his hatred of being a drunk. The hooker replies that she never knew her father because he was a drunkard who never came home.
Ashby shoots the scene to imply that Jeff is looking into his future, our hero a wounded old man looking at both his own daughter and the very outcome of his present alcoholism.
There are two or three good scenes like this, but for the most part the film's script has been edited down to your standard cops and bad guys movie. One senses that had Ashby been at the editing desk, a more free-form movie would have resulted.
Still, the film begins and ends with two very unique scenes. It's introduction, for example, features a long helicopter shot which tracks across an American super-highway, Ashby's camera framing distant automobiles like elevator carts, watching as they rise bizarrely off into the sky. The film ends, meanwhile, with an unusual three-way Mexican stand off.
Ashby draws this scene out to painful lengths, everyone yelling and screaming until their demands reach pathetic proportions. We've seen this scene before in countless other action movies, but none of these flicks have done anything quite like this. For Ashby completists only. Hal Ashby's last film had a great beginning, jumbled up in the middle and it was out of salvation at the annoying and louder ending.
This film is like sex without orgasm, doesn't have action, doesn't have much excitement, promises a lot and delivers too little and it disappoints a lot. The story involving a ex-cop Jeff Bridges , his drinking problems and a investigation on the death of a prostitute Alexandra Paul is not news in film history and it was good until the middle when he mets Rosanna Arquette, from this point it's all downhill.
It lacks interest, it goes in too many talks and almost no action, reaching an ending without any kind of climax. Worst of all, the villain has a huge lack of evilness, we're never able to see him doing something wrong or menacing. And the confusion is not only on screen, there's some controversies between the responsible of this.
One of the writers of this film was Oliver Stone, whose original screenplay was changed drastically throughout the filming, and after seeing the final result he wanted his name out of the credits, which was impossible because the credits were already made up. Robert Towne changed the screenplay, and Ashby himself made countless changes and improvisations, and at the end this is what you get: a boring film with nothing much to say. And the last confusion of all, not trying to blame one of my favorite directors of all time, but the producers fired him after finishing the filming, and they kept the whole control over editing and things like that, the final word.
It is difficult to say who ruined this movie but all I can say is that the actors cannot be blamed, and neither James Newton Howard's good musical score. The rest is up to you, if you want to see it or not. One of the most unnoticed with justice and disappointing films of the 80's. Ashby deserved a better ending in his filmography but we're talking about one of the most underrated directors of all time, who brought us preciosity's like "Harold and Maude" and "Being There" among others. Not convincingly performed, with a hell of a dramatic climax in that warehouse, which is the bit that this movie is mainly remembered for.
Yes, I saw it decades ago, and tonight, on DVD. And what was good back then, now just seem ludicrous. Alexandra Paul must have been desperate for an acting job.
Hey, full-frontal nudity as 'the streetlights makes her pubic hair glow' She does seem utterly, utterly miscast This might be because of this hindsight. But the main reason to watch glamor-wise is cue the Toto song here: Ali I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes, Rosanna, Rosanna : Lady Rosanna Arquette.
And although the script literally has yucky moments, once she is thrown into the shower and the unnecessary makeup is washed off, wow, dudes! What a stunner! I've cheered for this actress during the Eighties. She wasn't in successful big hit movies, real success eluded her, and I saw all that potential going to waste. Here's a good one though, to remember her by. That scene where she's clearly naked under the bedsheets, oh wow dudes!
To the prudes reading this: I'm just an old boy. If you saw this movie when it was on the cinema circuit, and you're waffling on about it almost 30 years later, of course you have to be an Old Boy. And Old Boys appreciate pretty girls. And get kinda silly drooling. If you're not into seeing these two actresses, and just want action action action this might not really be the movie for you.
Lots of the action scenes are seriously flawed. Hell, he's out of work, ruins his car, yet it just stays roadworthy in the next scenes. And why don't the baddies just shoot him down in that stand-off scene? Five stars go to Rosanna Arquette, the other star is for that glorious Clint Eastwood-y moment when Scudder fires his gun after coming to Sarah's rescue.
Cinematic perfection! It never seems to get anywhere and you have a hard time believing that the slick drug dealer is up to no good, or that the lush private eye wants to do anything to stop him. This is the story of an alcoholic cop Jeff Bridges who got kicked off the force after a sting operation went wrong and he shot an unarmed assailant.
Although, one might not think it too bad, though, that he did shoot the guy since he was nearly stabbing his partner to death and it was the only way the cop could stop him in time. Now, a sort of freelance private investigator, his help is sought by a friendly prostitute who seeks his protection because she wants to quit the business.
And, she is willing to pay him a hefty sum. It hardly seems like good enough reason for her to later wind up dead, which is what happens, since her "pimp" really doesn't seem to mind that she's made this decision. In fact, he feels a little hurt that she didn't tell him herself. Well, having just lost a friend, although we might seem to think the private investigator only new her very briefly, he is sure that someone was pursuing her, and he wants to figure out who and why.
This guy hardly seems stable enough to keep going on with the police work, since every time something traumatic happens, he falls into a drunken, depressed stupor. Eventually, he hooks up with the hooker's friend Rossanna Arquette , a sort of doppleganger, in that she is both naughty and nice but shakes off the naughty after she gets to know the guy , who doesn't seem at all bothered to help him out, even though she thinks he is responsible for the woman's death at first.
He also employs the help of the woman's "pimp," a pretty decent guy for a fellow who runs a prostitution business, and he's willing to help out because he knows the drug dealer Andy Garcia that the investigator suspects is responsible for the girl's death, is really a vicious fellow, even though he never really shows it.
There is not really enough solid character development, everyone appears a little too "off" to be those kind of characters, and the movie tends to drag on at points, especially in feeling obligated to develop some sort of relationship between the cop and the hooker's friend, but, if you're willing to forgive that much, then you might at least have a little lazy day entertainment with a semi-decent action movie.
Open a can of 80s cheese and enjoy. There's a few solid parts here but overall it's just not worth the sum of its strengths. The plot is super simple and the so-called detective work is weak. The climax is all shouting and lacking real drama.
If you really want to see Jeff Bridges playing a drunk recovering then by all means go track this down, but it's not really that great, so you're not missing much. A watchable disappointment jellyneckr 4 September I've been looking for a copy of 8 Million Ways to Die for probably about twelve years now.
Having been a box office flop and one of the rare movies that has never been released on DVD, it's easily the film I've been looking to find longer than any other. Needless to say, when I finally saw this was playing on cable, I couldn't wait to finally watch it. Unfortunately, my years of anticipation built up unrealistic expectations, and as I made my way through the film, I became less interested and more let down as the film went on. On the plus side, 8 Million Ways to Die has a pretty solid first 45 minutes or so.
Despite changing Matt Scudder's great origin story from the novel to something more generic and less dramatically interesting, the character is still a somewhat fascinating one, thanks entirely due to a typically entertaining performance from Jeff Bridges in the lead role. However, 8 Million Ways to Die takes a drastic drop in quality in the second act with Andy Garcia's villain character taking center stage.
I love Andy Garcia in everything else I've seen him, but his performance here is simply baffling. Over-the-top to the most extreme degree, its embarrassing to watch, something that I don't think is entirely Garcia's fault. The film was taken away from director Hal Ashby and edited without his input, so who knows who actually is responsible for what ended up in the final cut.
Garcia's performance seems like something that could have been shaped into the editing room, as a little bit of his character goes a long way and gets annoying fast. I find it hard to believe that an otherwise solid director like Ashby would have let the second half play out the way it does had he been given final cut. The second half of 8 Million Ways to Die is a mess, tonally inconsistent with the first half and actually mildly painful to watch at times. Despite a not-so-stellar second half, 8 Million Ways to Die is not a complete disaster.
It's simply a disappointing film that should have been a lot better. It's a real mystery why the film isn't available on DVD, as there are hundreds of worse and even less profitable films that have been released on DVD and Blu Ray.
Maybe it's due to a complicated rights issue, which is probably slightly more interesting than the movie itself. Regardless, fans of Lawrence Block's Scudder novels, not to mention fans of Jeff Bridges, would still love to see this get a proper release. This is never more evident than in the opening scene and the climax.
Both of those big moments feature "dramatic" confrontations that consist of guns being pointed while people incessantly shout at one another. And there is no content to the words yelled back and forth beyond repetition of various threats.
I had to mute the film for a few minutes in the stand-off at the end, as it started to become too obnoxious for me. It seems pretty clear that they didn't have any dialogue written down for the actors, so they just kept screaming the same things louder and louder. This is an amateur's idea of how to raise tension in a scene, by merely raising the volume.
It's a shame because there is some talent in the cast, but they are given little to work with. Sign In. Action Crime Drama. Director Hal Ashby. Lawrence Block based upon the book by Oliver Stone screenplay by R. Lance Hill screenplay by. Top credits Director Hal Ashby.
See more at IMDbPro. Photos Top cast Edit. Jeff Bridges Scudder as Scudder. Rosanna Arquette Sarah as Sarah. Alexandra Paul Sunny as Sunny. Randy Brooks Chance as Chance. Vance Valencia Quintero as Quintero. Vyto Ruginis Durkin as Durkin.
Henry O. James Avery Deputy D. Jack Younger Drunk as Drunk. Zoaunne LeRoy Nurse as Nurse. Hal Ashby. More like this. R 1 hr 55 min Apr 25th, Crime. Director Hal Ashby. Movies Like 8 Million Ways to Die. A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate ps Featured News. Movie Reviews House of Gucci. Licorice Pizza. Please contact us to tell us about your project or request a preview.
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