The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)

A power struggle between the CIA Director Ross (Charles Durning) and his ambitious second-in-command Cooper (Dabney Coleman), leaves concert violinist Richard Drew (Tom Hanks) caught in the middle of a plan to, um. . . I'm not really sure. Ross has 48 hours before he appears before a Senate inquiry, and somehow making Cooper think the "man with one red shoe" has testimony that will clear Ross is going to actually sink Cooper?

Maybe because it'll spur Cooper to deploy CIA assets on U.S. soil, which the CIA can't do, wink wink? It does work, because Cooper charges into the inquiry with a gun chasing Drew in an attempt to kill him before he can testify. Which makes him seem unstable and unsuited for the job, but also seems like a hard outcome to predict.

To be clear, this is not a case of Ross having principles and worrying what Cooper will do if he gets the big chair. Ross likes having the big chair, and doesn't want to give it up. He's fine playing dirty, he's fine having his subordinate pick some guy to be the bait, and he's fine if the bait dies. Probably would even help, in the fantasy world this movie occurs in, where people in the Reagan administration actually faced consequences for immoral acts.

Anyway, Drew is the unwitting witness/bait. So Cooper's attempt to figure out what intel Drew has turns into a comedy (I use the term loosely) of errors occurring around a largely oblivious Tom Hanks. They incapacitate Drew's dentist before an appointment, the agent replacing him planning to yank out all Drew's teeth in a search for concealed microfilm. Only for Drew to lose his nerve when he hears a patient freaking out and bail. One of the agents Ross has surveilling the whole thing had fallen behind and ends up walking into the trap instead.

Skipping the appointment means Drew returns home early, so the team tearing his place apart does a rush job putting it back together. Now the handles on the faucet in the sink control his shower, and the toilet controls the sink, his shampoo is in his toothpaste tube, and his chairs are structurally unsound.

Drew's also carrying on an affair with a flutist (Carrie Fisher) in the symphony. Her percussionist husband (Jim Belushi) becomes increasingly paranoid as the CIA teams grow reckless. But Drew's head gets turned by Maddy (Lori Singer), Cooper's top agent, who is herself charmed when Drew plays a piece of music he's been writing (and which Cooper concludes must contain a code.)

It feels like it ought to be funny, but it mostly didn't work for me. I laughed a lot more at Paint, or even Eephus, which is not a comedy, than this film. There is one poor agent wandering the sewers for hours, because Cooper thinks all the toilet flushing was Drew putting something down the pipes, rather than just trying to use his sink. The way that guy is forgotten, still down there alone in the middle of the night, lost and defeated, while Drew's wooing Maddy with his music, that was sorta funny.

Other than that? Not much. Tom Hanks can do comedy, but the way the movie is structured, he's the center of everything, but very little of it touches him. It's all going on around him without his knowledge. Like, the whole mess with his plumbing is revealed through him trying to use the sink and the shower turning on. There's a chance for some silly physical comedy, Hanks get sprayed or something, and the movie is just like, "Nah." Most of the humor is apparently supposed to be watching these agents tie themselves in knots trying to figure out what Drew is up to.

One bit that works is when he returns home from the aborted trip to the dentist and Maddy is waiting in his living room as a distraction until the team can tranq dart him and then flee. Except it takes 3 darts to put him out (I guess because seeing her in his apartment got him too worked up for the darts to work), with his speech getting increasingly goofy until he topples over.

Belushi plays his usual loud idiot, and I guess we're supposed to laugh he's the butt of jokes because he plays dumb practical jokes on Hanks all the time. Fake peanuts, exploding cigars, I'm sure whoopee cushions are utilized. He's also getting cheated on by his wife with his friend, and then starts finding dead bodies that keep mysteriously vanishing, until he goes nuts. Not before he thinks he's going to be killed by a gunman, mind you. I ended up feeling bad for him.

Fisher feels wasted by the movie, and I didn't see any particular chemistry between Hanks and Singer to carry their romantic subplot. Drew is just panting after a leggy blonde, while Maddy doesn't seem to think of him as anything other than a job until he plays that piece he wrote, which happens pretty late in the proceedings.

Also, Drew rides his bike everywhere, but does so wearing headphones, which is insane. He's entirely cut off his hearing as an aid to keep him alive, and he's biking on roads with cars. So either he's one of the cyclists who expects everyone to give way to them, or he's got a death wish, and I don't think he's got a death wish.