Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 21, 1990 TAG: 9004210432
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In "Miami Blues," Mosley is brought to the screen by Fred Ward. It's hard to imagine better casting. Ward rumbles Mosley's hard-boiled witticisms with perfect voice inflection and facial expression. He's as glamorous as a bag of dirty laundry - which he kind of resembles.
Mosley's case this time begins with the airport death of a Hare Krishna. The obnoxious pest happens to preach to the wrong passenger - a wholesome looking sociopath named Junior. With little ceremony, Junior breaks the religious zealot's fingers. Either through shock or a heart attack, the Hare Krishna dies and Mosley gets the case.
Played by Alec Baldwin, who was last seen as the heroic CIA agent in "Hunt for Red October," Junior is bad news all the way around. Baldwin gives him a peculiar hoarse whisper but everything else about his performance is so natural to the impulsive, dangerous and violent Junior that it, too, finally seems right.
Junior just wants a normal life, he tells Pepper, the hooker who becomes his girlfriend. Played exquisitely by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Pepper is a down-home gal with enough sense - barely - to take business courses to help her invest her hooking earnings.
She, too, yearns for a house with a white picket fence and Junior provides them with one so he can come home to a nice dinner and a cheerful wife after a hard day of ripping people off. Pepper and Junior are the American dream askew; an unwitting Bonnie and a thoughtlessly cruel Clyde who want to be like everyone else but aren't smart enough to realize they can't.
After playing at cop in order to rob people, Junior starts to act like a real cop in his quest to be an average citizen. When he tries to stop a store robbery, he's run down by a four-wheel-drive truck. "I should have known better," he laments.
Directed by George Armitage, "Miami Blues" is a refreshingly off-beat police story though it's sure to be too violent and lurid for some. Things seem to happen not by writerly design but by the kind of happenstance that real life provides.
The filmmakers - including producer Jonathan Demme noted for his own brand of offbeat movies - have done justice to Welliford's book. Maybe that kind of success will bring Mosley back to the screen again. Let's hope so, at any rate. "Miami Blues" An Orion picture at Salem Valley 8. Rated R for violence, language, nudity and sexual content. An hour and 40 minutes long.
by CNB