Thursday, April 26, 2018

MIDNIGHT COP (1988) * ½


Armin Mueller-Stahl stars as a detective investigating the death of a junkie.  He tracks down her drug dealer (Frank Stallone) and winds up falling in love with a classy prostitute (Morgan Fairchild).  The dope pusher is also entangled in a blackmail scheme with Michael York, who also happens to be a friend of Mueller-Stahl’s, which complicates matters.

If you’re a casting director looking for a hardscrabble police detective, Armin Mueller-Stahl is probably about the eighty-seventh guy you’d pick.  If you need someone to fill the role of someone’s crochety grandfather, he’d be a perfect fit.  He’s just all wrong for the part, which pretty much sinks Midnight Cop from the get-go.  (You also have to deal with a lot of scenes of him pawing and groping Fairchild, which is sure to churn your stomach.)  I did like the fact that they try to give him a lot of oddball character traits like eating pickles and listening to instrumental versions of “A Whiter Shade of Pale”.  

Mueller-Stahl’s investigation is very slow-going.  Even when something potentially cool occurs (like when he throws Stallone out of a window), it’s usually followed with a lot more inanity.  In the right hands, this could’ve been an odd septuagenarian twist on the usual private eye tropes.  Unfortunately, director Peter Patzak never makes it work.

Stallone fares well enough as the scuzzy pusher who in his big scene gives the girl a fix while she lays topless on his bed.  York does what he can, but he isn’t very convincing when he makes the switch from suave businessman to sweaty psycho.  I liked Fairchild as the sexy call girl, although I must admit she could’ve been in it more.  Had she gotten naked for her sex scenes, it might’ve given this weird and slow movie a reason to exist.  Other than that, it’s a big waste of time.

AKA:  Killing Blue.

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