Breakinger
A Brilliant Conflict
Orla Zuniga
It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review
Staci Frederick
Blistering performances.
scrapmetal7
The elements of this film do not work. It is one of those movies like The Counselor or Righteous Kill that has a fine cast of talented actors and hands them an unworkable script. For Catherine Deneuve, the solution is simple. She should not be in this movie at all. She makes no sense as an upscale LA prostitute. Faye Dunaway or Catherine Bach (who is in the movie) could have played this part far more convincingly. It doesn't matter though because Deneuve's character shouldn't be in the movie anyway. Her scenes as a cop's love interest are so boring and pointless... they make the movie very hard to get through. Burt Reynolds is fine as a depressed alcoholic cop. His character pretty much does acts believably, drinking, hanging around bars, solving crimes when he can. It's not believable that he also runs around with Catherine Deneuve and goes to see French films with her, or that the filmmakers could have thought that we wanted to watch several long conversations between the two. Storywise, the characters talk about a young dead woman in vile ways, and it makes for very sleazy viewing, as does her father's roaming strip clubs trying to prove that she was murdered. The sleazy parts about the young dead girl jar badly with the pseudo-intellectual nonsense of the boring Reynolds-Deneuve scenes. The movie tries to have heart for it's absurd romantic plot line and has none for the portrayal of the victim and her parents, where it would actually make more sense. I'd always been told that George C. Scot's HARDCORE was a really sleazy movie. I saw it though, and I thought it had a lot of heart and an intelligent script. HUSTLE, by contrast, fails at showing heart and almost collapses under its own sleaziness. Almost, because what really collapses this film is dull romance between a realistic alcoholic burnout and a magical fairy lady from Narnia.
tvnutt
Burt Reynolds really channels a young Marlon Brando in this film. He plays Lt. Phil Gains and is a cool character who doesn't like to get too close to people(he has a penchant for 30's style music and vernacular). He lives with his girlfriend, played by Catherine Deneuve, who happens to be a Call Girl but neither of them are willing to give up the dangers(mental and physical) of their careers. However, they dream about running off to Europe. It's as if they are afraid of what will happen if they do.To sum it up, Gains is called in to investigate the body of a young girl found dead on a beach. It is ruled a suicide but the girl's parents, mainly her father, refuse to believe it. The father, played by actor Ben Johnson, is seeking revenge and Gains wants to be one step ahead of him. To me, the standout in this film is actor Eddie Albert, who I've always had a crush on. This is probably the creepiest role he ever played. He's a lawyer with mob connections and won't let anyone stand in his way. He is also a client of Deneuve's character and grins ear-to-ear when talking about the dead girl and the pleasure he and friends got from her. We're talking HUGE creep factor here. In one scene he refers to the girl by saying "She could get milk out of a crowbar." Don't think I need to explain THAT line. This film is the typical 1970's cop film with lounge jazz music playing over a car scene. Pretty tame by today's standards but did earn an R-rating. There is reference to a porno film that is supposed to feature Albert's character Leo Sellers(again pushing that creep factor up!). "Hustle" is probably one of Burt's more forgettable films but it is fun to see him take to a role so seriously after seeing him in Smokey and his other action films.
michelerealini
I watched "Hustle" only because there is Catherine Deneuve -in fact this is one of the very few movies she made in Hollywood. The pair she forms with Burt Reynolds also interested me.A LA detective has to discover why a young girl was found dead on a beach. He deals with the father, who obviously doesn't accept her loss and doesn't believe the police explanation -she has committed suicide. At the same time the detective has a relationship with a French prostitute, he dreams of taking her away from the job.It's a flat unexciting thriller, with quite empty dialogs and useless characters (can anyone explain me what does Ernest Borgnine do in the story?). Also the elements of the script are quite disconnected to each other -the murder of the girl and the relationship between Reynolds and Deneuve. Nothing is in-depth.Catherine Deneuve, at the end, is only a decorative presence.A big disappointment from Robert Aldrich -the director of "The Dirty Dozen".
BOLTZ2U
Hustle is a terrific film with a a really nice performance by the always under used (the late great) Paul Winfield, he and Burt Reynolds work well together and Eddie Albert is scary as the low life "leo sellers". the stunt the one reviewer is talking about re: albino actor falling from high rise while blasting his pistol into camera is the late great, Dar Robinson from Reynolds' other film, "stick" in the early eighties. i'm glad this is on DVD now and finally a Reinold's' film that is letter boxed. i hope they can re-do the other films IE: "white lightning", "gator" and "shamus" in letterbox form especially "gator" cause it was shot in Todd A-O scope.
