COHEN AND TATE (1988)

Call it Roy Scheider’s dilemma.  Always an unlikely star, but in demand after JAWS/’75 proved not simply a huge hit, but a generational Hollywood game changer.  Yet even then, Scheider was typically second or third choice (if that) for top directors on his best projects (SORCERER/’77; ALL THAT JAZZ/’79) and continued to play in support on other stars projects (MARATHON MAN/’76; THE RUSSIA HOUSE/’90).  And this was before he became tricky to photograph with a medical condition that made his skin look a couple of sizes too loose for his face.  By 1988, he’s down to this lowball Neo-Noir debut from little seen writer/director Eric Red (five projects over the next four decades).  Partnered with Adam Baldwin, they play mob hit men assigned to kill a family under witness protection.  But a botched job leaves the main target in hospital and his 10-yr-old son in the killers’ backseat.  Violent, gory and dislikable (the film and the men), the kid proves a psychological master, getting the men to bicker, feud & eventually attack each other while he looks for an escape plan.  What does catch fire here is the film’s odd comic tone.  Sneaking in around mid-point, and with an alarmingly funny angle once you note how much the hitmen mirror the characteristics of Laurel and Hardy . . . in ultra-violent modern drag.*  Baldwin as over-sensitive/thin-skinned, quickly hysterical Stan.  Scheider as Oliver, slow, methodical, thoughtful, with a put-upon grudge and not as smart as he thinks he is.  Was this intended?  Accidental?  Serendipitous?  Who knows.  But it adds something sly & silly to the kinetically charged mayhem.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Most Neo-Noir come with an active sense of sick humor, but rarely raid silent comedy routines or personalities.  And though Laurel & Hardy never played hit men, they did play grave robbers in HABEAS CORPUS/’28, recently restored with its original soundtrack and easy to find on the internet.