This is one of those movies I'm unreasonably fond of because I watched it too many times when I was much younger, because it was on one of our cable movie channels all the time (Showtime, I think). Like Bio-Dome, Virtuosity, or City Slickers 2. But I hadn't watched it in over 20 years, so it's kind of an interesting experience now, with more awareness.
My first thought re-watching it was it's kind of a noir at the start. A disgraced cop turned down-on-his-luck private detective who runs his mouth too much (Keene Ivory Wayans). His old cop buddy (Charles Dutton, who almost gives Shame the speech he gave Rudy), now with the DEA, giving him a chance at the case that ruined him, and a reunion with the femme fatale (Vivica Fox) that broke his heart. His plucky gal Friday secretary (Jada Pinkett, probably the first movie I saw her in) who has a crush on him.
There's also a lot of late '80s-early '90s action movie stuff. The kind of stuff all the McBain clips on The Simpsons make fun of, right down to the drug lord being named "Mendoza". The movie does not end with Shame laying out everything to everyone. It does end with two separate fistfights. Bad guys with Uzis firing craploads of bullets and hitting nothing. The private detective having a set of really nice clothes and really nice firearms to pull out of mothballs when he needs to kill a bunch of people. A happy ending where the two main characters end up together and all the bad people are dead or going to jail.
There's probably a lot in it that owes to blaxploitation films, but that's a part of film history I still don't know well enough to speak confidently on. I feel like the main character's name being "Shame" has to sort of be a nod to Shaft. I think there's reference to one of Wayans' earlier films when a character mutters "I'm gonna git you, sucka," which was the title of said earlier film. I would have expected Shame to have more trouble with cops, but other than a lieutenant who just seems exasperated by Shame (like every frustrated, shouty police captain ever), there isn't much.
There's more homophobic jokes than I remembered. I knew there was some, because I remembered a scene where Shame causes a break-up between Peaches' roommate and his boyfriend by acting like a stereotypically flamboyant gay man who is dating said roommate himself, but I'd forgotten several other moments.
The interplay between Wayans and Pinkett is the high point. They seem to enjoy arguing back-and-forth, him teasing her about reading tabloids that tell you dogs won't attack if you sing James Brown, or how they met when he caught her stuffing CDs in her pants. Her giving him grief about his clothes or still owing him money. There's an easy chemistry to it where you can believe their characters are attracted to each other, even if Shame thinks he's not good enough for her. It's not as great between Wayans and Fox, which you could explain with her heart not being in it because she knows they're going to end up set against each other, but he doesn't really seem that hung up on her, either.
It felt like Shame gets serious a little too early in the movie. Switches to the nice car/clothes/firearms about halfway through, rather than in the last quarter. Like visually he's moving into the climax before the plot is ready to get there. He's dressed to kick ass, but he's still just trying to get information.
No comments:
Post a Comment