Stick (Burt Reynolds) is a veteran car thief who has just gotten out of prison. No sooner has Stick arrived home in Florida then he accompanies his friend, Rainy (Jose Perez), on a drug deal that goes bad. When Rainy is killed, Stick goes into hiding. He manages to get a stable job, working as a chauffeur for an eccentric millionaire (George Segal). He gets a new girlfriend (Candice Bergen) and starts to bond with his teenage daughter (Tricia Leigh Fisher). Stick wants to go straight but, before he can, he knows that he has to confront the men who murdered Rainy.
Stick starts out strong. The first half of the film finds Burt, who was often as underrated as a director as he was as an actor, in pure Sharky’s Machine mode, mixing the steamy Florida atmosphere with quirky character comedy and hardboiled action. Adapting his own novel, Elmore Leonard wrote the screenplay and Stick seems like a classic Leonard hero, a criminal with his own moral code.
But then Stick falls apart during the second half and it becomes obvious why both Reynolds and Leonard often cited this film as being one of the biggest disappointments of their careers. Universal Studios disliked Burt’s first cut of the film and brought in a second screenwriter, who beefed up the action scenes and added the subplot with Stick’s teenage daughter. Reynolds reshot the second half of the movie, no longer playing Stick as a tough criminal but instead as another variation on the Bandit. The end result is a very disjointed movie, with Burt looking bored.
It does not help that the movie’s main villain is played by Charles Durning, who wears an orange fright wig and several Hawaiian shirts. Durning was an actor who gave many great performances but never was he as miscast as when he played a drug dealer in Stick.
Saigon, South Vietnam. A CIA agent stands on a street corner when a young man parks his scooter in front of him. The young man runs away and the scooter explodes, killing the agent. Another agent, Mark Andrews (Burt Reynolds), is sent to Saigon to find out why the first agent was killed. From the minute he arrives, Mark finds himself in the middle of a web of betrayal, intrigue, double agents, and a communist plot to assassinate the American ambassador. Only Mark can prevent the assassination but first, he is going to have to survive a series of death traps. He will also have to wrestle a boa constrictor. If you have ever wanted to see Burt Reynolds wrestle a boa constrictor, this is the movie for you.
Duncan (Aldo Sambrell) and his gang are the most ruthless and feared outlaws in the old west. When first seen, they are destroying a Navajo village and shooting everyone that they see. Duncan even steals a pendant from a young Indian woman. When that woman’s husband, Joe (Burt Reynolds), discovers what has happened, he sets out for vengeance. With Ennio Morricone’s classic score playing in the background, Joe kills one gang member after another. When Duncan and his gang lay siege to the town of Esperanza, Joe approaches the townspeople and offers to defend them. His price? “One dollar a head from every man in this town for every bandit that I kill.”
Gator McClusky is back!
Through the Shattered Lens 