Full Transcript for Shakedown (1988)

you don't really see a lot of him. You see his chin in that movie. He's an interesting actor. He he does very well, he is engaging to watch and he's a weird looking little fella. I mean he's only like five foot. He's like a little little leprechaun running around. Jake: If they had made Lord of the Rings bingo cards, if they had made that back in nineteen eighty eight, I feel like Peter Weller would be number one on the call sheet for Legolas. Pete: I thought you were gonna say Frodo. Jake: No. He looks far too menacing and and and a chode to be Frodo dude. Pete: You're right, he does look a bit like an elf though, doesn't he? He's got that weird sunken eyes, high cheekbones. I think they took a couple of fucking spiky ears on that motherfucker. He's an elf. Jake: Looks like he he got fired from making toys for Santa. Pete: The size difference between these two as well. When they're filmed like side to side and having an argument, Peter Weller's like head and shoulders below Sam Elliott here. Sam Elliot, how tall is he though? He must be over six foot, that guy. Jake: always struck me as someone who's also very short. I don't know. Pete: Sam Elliott. You might be right. It's the magic of Hollywood, isn't it, that they can elongate these motherfuckers when they like. Jake: shit, he's six two. Pete: Yeah, you don't you don't carry off that kind of moustache when you're a little short Napoleon type of character. Jake: That mustache does not belong on a guy who's five ten, let me tell ya. That's a six foot plus mustache. Pete: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that that moustache itself is about three foot wide. Jake: Peter Weller, it says here is six foot, so not that big of a height disparity between the two. Pete: He's not six foot there's no fucking way. I don't know, but he's not six foot when he's standing next to Sam Elliott in this movie, he is a head and shoulders below him. He's looking up at his eyes, he's like, Hi Jake: You want a hot dog, Sam Elliott? Pete: I might be wrong, Les. That's how I kinda remember. I remember a scene where he's kind of looking up at Sam Elliott. And it you know, looking literally vertically up. But I like his I like I like his performance. I like Peter Weller in this movie. He gives a good enthusiastic and believable performance as a as a lawyer or an attorney. Jake: I like his smarmy, quippy character in this. I think he's fun. He's engaging to watch on screen. Granted, there there are a a couple of scenes where you're kinda like, this guy's a fucking sleaze ball, but he has just enough redeemable qualities to make him likable and and a a strong protagonist for this flick. Pete: I'm not sure about the story with Gail though. I'm not sure that was needed in this movie, that he basically fucks his his fiancee over when she's pregnant. It's like, okay, what yeah Jake: we'll get into it. We'll get into that. It's just so like as as a guy who had a real B in his bonnet about the the Wild podcast, I'm trying to temper my my enthusiasm for this movie because he is a character in this movie that's just like, fuck accountability. Nothing really matters. Just gonna do whatever the fuck I want. So long as I'm I have the moral high ground with this Michael Jones case, I'm just gonna put my My Peter in every weller I can. Pete: Yes, he's not a good role model, the sky Jake. Jake: Certainly not. Most certainly not. We got Blanche Baker playing Gail Feinberg, the fiance and love interest of Peter Weller. And we also have Patricia Charbonneau playing Susan Cantrell, who's Peter Weller's ex girlfriend and new love interest in the flick. What'd you think of these two actors? Pete: They do fine. I think Blanche Baker is a very attractive lady. She's lovely blonde. She she looks very nice. She plays the fiance of Peter Weller's character in this movie. She does fine. Not really needed though, as I as I just mentioned in the story. I don't really know why she's there. The other one, Patricia Charbonneau, she's a weird one. She's like a dominatrix in this movie, Jake. She's like bossing everybody around and Peter Weller just loves it, doesn't he? Dalton is just like willing to being fucking told what to do. Jake: She runs a tight ship, this Susan. Pete: Sam Elliott and Peter Weller did not get on at first when they were making this movie. Their relationship warmed during filming after Sam Elliott supported Weller's participation in the nineteen eighty-seven New York City Marathon. Jake: Dude, I I wanna see that movie where it's Peter Weller and Sam Elliott starting off as rivals and then end the picture with them as best friends as Peter Weller crosses the finish line of the New York marathon and they embrace you know, freeze frame on on Sam Elliott, lifting up Peter Weller just a little bit, Peter Weller's fist in the air. Pete: Yes. Throws him up in the air and that's where you get the the ending cut shot where he's doing like a star shooting. Yeah. Apparently a script rewrite was supposedly meant to add leash or weapon last to this movie, Jake. Jake: They were really trying the lethal weapon bent. Pete: Yeah, apparently. Yeah, well lethal weapon was a was a huge thing, wasn't it, in the eighties. Everyone loved lethal weapon. What year was that? Was that eighty seven? Lethal weapon? Jake: was eighty seven, yeah. This is coming out the following year. Pete: Yeah. The magic year of eighty seven. We've gone through that before, Jake, haven't we? Jake: Hey, brother. Pete: yeah, so this came out the year after. So they saw the success and the money that was being made by Lisa Weapon and they go, We're gonna do a movie like that, buddy cop movie, but we'll have an attorney instead of the cop and instead of having like a crazy one, we'll have one that's just like just a badass. So that was what they came up with is it with this movie. Jake: I feel like this is dirty hairy, post dirty hairy years and post Lethal Weapon. So it has a little bit of both. Lethal Weapon takes place in Los

Angeles and you get a lot of that, LA cocaine, that feel to it. We're we're adjacent to the movie industry. We've got characters making videotapes, pornographic videotapes. And in this flick, it's New York, baby. It is slimy. It is sleazy. It is, cops what is it? Street clothes cops being able to wield grenades for some fucking reason. Just awesome. Pete: Blue jean cops take. Jake: I one one last quick quick thing I want to mention is that I love the look of this movie. The what's going on on screen is fun, it's interesting, but just the way this movie looks is what catapulted it to its status now in in my movie enjoyment. This has a certain aesthetic to it. And I think I you know, I mentioned it during the Candyman episode on trying to get to the bottom of what what Brandon really likes about movies. And there's this sort of film stock from the late eighties, early nineties that they were using. That's very grainy. And the way that they shoot these scenes, particularly at night or in the car, it just screams to me of an era and of an aesthetic. And it's a similar aesthetic to the nineteen eighty-nine Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. There are whole bits of this that make me think of that movie. And f by virtue of that fact, this is just catapulted into the rankings as one of a is like a top tier movie for Mr. Larson. Pete: Yes. That's interesting. So it reminds you of the of the celluloid that's used in the eighties and that that brings you back a little bit to your your childhood love of of T and T. Right. Jake: Yeah, and I felt the same way about Salute of the Jugger. It has it has almost the identical film grain. And when they make it down into the subterranean city, it's just like, this is this is so nostalgic. I've never seen this movie before, but I I know the feel of it. I know the aesthetic of it, and it just feels very comfortable. Pete: Well, they had to do a little bit grainy and not so clear in this movie, just really because of the the stunt double for Sam Elliott, I believe, who was strikingly obvious in this movie. Jake: yeah. Little plot synopsis for the gentle listener. In Shakedown from nineteen eighty-eight, Peter Weller plays Roland Dalton, a New York public defender, representing a drug dealer accused of murdering an undercover cop. When this client claims that the officer was corrupt and he was acting in self-defense, Dalton teams up with Richie Marks, a streetwise narcotics detective played by Sam Elliott. Together, they uncover a network of crooked cops and drug traffickers in New York City. Leading to a wild combination of courtroom drama, shootouts, car chases, and over the top nineteen eighties action. And that is Shakedown in a nutshell, Pete. Let's get into it. Pete: We open with a strong hip hop beat from the East Coast, Jake, from New York City, and the opening credits, and we pan across it looks like some sort of waste ground while this music is going on. The credits are going across across the screen and it looks like sort of drug paraphernalia all over the ground. You've got little caps, little plastic caps, you've got some syringes, little sort of reps or whatever, and it pans up to A guy smoking some crack. You see him get some crack out of his little packet of cigarettes and he puts it in his glass crack pipe, lights that motherfucker up, and we see this is the intro of mister Michael Jones, who is a crack dealer. In fact he I think he does many different drugs. He does many he's a drug dealer based in Central Park, New York City, and he's looking out for customers. Jake: Is this an actor? Richard Brooks plays Michael Jones, and he has one of the more memorable performances in the movie. This streetwise drug dealer, his line deliveries are very lyrical. I would would you say? He's got like a really interesting delivery. I'm a drug dealer and I live in Riker's Island prison. It's just very, very engaging to listen. Pete: He gives his customers a little rhyme, doesn't he, when they come up to him. Jake: Yeah, that's what I was about to say. So first of all, we get a lot of close ups on him loading this crack pipe. We are with th they they are hiding nothing from the viewer. This is a gentleman hanging out in Central Park, just smoking a little crack, having a good time, all on his Jack Joe, all on his loads of. Pete: He's pretty blatant about the whole thing, isn't he? He is not really undercover at all. He's got his ghetto blaster blasting out this rap music on on the floor next to his feet. He is underneath a light at night time in Central Park and he is just huffing on this fucking glass pipe, just getting high as you like, Jake. Jake: Guy comes up, he's like, I'm looking for lightning. And he's like, I got uppers, danas, coke, blow. Stuff something to take you anywhere you wanna go. And the guy's like, Yeah, yeah, all right. Well whatever, dude. I'm just looking for some crack, okay? Pete: Is that is that lightning? I never heard of lightning. Yeah. Jake: Yeah, he that's what that's evidently that's what crack cocaine is 'cause later in the courtroom scene, Michael Jones would be like, I got a guy coming up looking for lightning. That's crack to you. Pete: He explained us. Yeah. I've got to watch this movie, Jay. It sounds fucking fantastic. Yeah. Jake: Pete, I I are we having a silent running episode here? Pete: Hang on a second, I'm just putting Mary O'Conn Hang on. How do you tell a guy he's a cop without telling a guy he's a cop, Jake? 'Cause he's fucking audio and you're around. He tells Michael, Turn off that music and Michael's like, What? Why don't you just walk fifteen meters that way, you won't hear it, buddy? Jake: Hey, can you turn off that rap music? I'm not a fan of that rap music. And Michael Jones sees the writing on the wall right away, so he leans down and instead of pressing stop on the tape, he presses record. Pete: He's going over his favourite mixtape though, Jake. He's gonna be gutted in the morning. Jake: He's he's

recording over ribity rap rap tastic nineteen eighty eight mix. Pete: Flavor flav and all that, yeah. Grandmaster funk. dude, yeah he's gonna be really annoyed at himself. god damn. Anyway, yeah, he presses record and that's where the scene d do we get to see any of the shootout at all? I think we get to see just the they pull out their guns, don't they? Is that right? Jake: No, it's very cinematic. It's this is just really good economic storytelling. So the the the the cop, the presumed cop, the white guy, reaches into his pocket, presumably to grab his wallet, and Michael Jones is reaching into his lapel pocket and then it cuts to a a a blue and white cop car and something comes over the radio and it's saying officer down, officer down. So, you know, we don't see anything happen, we don't see the altercation, but we know that there was some sort of an issue between these two gentlemen. Pete: It cuts then to the cops arriving on scene, their blues and twos blaring. They jump out of the car, they check out the scene, and then we see two bodies, maybe dead, maybe not, we don't know, lying next to each other in in the park. Jake: Paramedic comes in and he he leans over the cop and he he gets up, he checks a couple things and gets up to go the other guy and the cop the the other uniformed police officer next to him was like, Hey, where the fuck are you going? Help this guy out. Pete: They're annoyed that the paramedic is not able to save the the white guy on the ground. So we're assuming he's he's one of the but the boys in blue but undercover. Jake: It then cuts to the hero of the picture. We get a a tight end on a ghetto blaster in a kitchen somewhere, a load of tapes, the radio's playing the report that there was a shooting in the park and an officer was is was killed, drug dealers in custody. You you see a a set of hands looking through the tapes, and he he puts a tape into the ghetto blaster presses play, and Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix starts playing over the opening credits of this film. Pete: This is the intro to Peter Weller's character Dalton, as you say, the attorney, and he is loving a bit of music in the morning. And Jake, what the fuck is he making for breakfast here? Jake: well let me tell ya. He is loading up a blender with milk, orange juice, coffee crystals, an egg, and he'll blend it up and later in the scene he'll say, It's a homemade orange Julius. my god. This guy's a fucking animal. Pete: Yeah, and not only does he not drink the mixture that he's made, this disgusting potion that he's made in his kitchen, he like takes one sip and puts it down. He's left like a liter of this shit in the in in the mixer, in the blender. In the blender? I mean yes. I mean clean up after yourself. It is. Disgraceful. But mean who'd make that? I thought when he was reaching in, he got the milk, he got out this packet of something I thought he was gonna make some beautiful pancakes. That's what I thought he was going for, Jake, when I saw these ingredients, the eggs, the milk, but no. Jake: Negative. Negative. he's making a breakfast of a this this weird shake, this weird homemade orange Julius with milk and orange juice, and he's making us a b a batch of popcorn. That's that's the breakfast of champions for this public defender here. Pete: What's an Orange Julius? I've never heard of that term. Jake: okay. Orange Julius is like there were a bunch of these shops called Orange Julius back in the day and they would make this orange cream smoothie type of thing. Pete: you'd have dairy, milk or cream and orange juice together. Jake: Yeah, yeah. And it was frozen if I recall. It it was they were delicious, don't get me wrong, but I think they've gone by the wayside as people have grown into better understandings of general health and and flavors. Pete: Well, fair enough. Yeah. But his homemade version of this looks absolutely fucking rank, Jake. I wouldn't Jake: This look. Pete: I wouldn't feed this to my worst enemy. No. Jake: Yeah, I wouldn't prepare this for the cats in the neighborhood. This is just awful. But yeah, the missus will come in, and dude, this is where we get some of the most do I have to talk about that's not nice in every episode we do from now on? So Pete: Go ahead, Jake. What you got? Jake: in comes Gail, all right, the fiance. She comes in and she hits stop on Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze, which immediately elicits the rancor of Peter Weller here. He's like, I was jamming. I was vibing. You beamed me up in my ecstasy. What are you doing? And Gail comes in and she's like, I don't see why you have to listen to heavy metal in the morning. And hand to the forehead slap, the same as Peter Weller in this. He's like, Are you fucking high? This isn't heavy metal. This is Jimi Hendrix. This is music from the late 60s, early 70s. This isn't heavy metal. What's wrong with you? Pete: poor Gail. She's just musically challenged, Gail. She doesn't know a great deal about music. Maybe she's more sporty in nature. Maybe she just likes to do like water polo. She likes to play tennis and like real short skirts. Do you know what I mean? Shit like that. Jake: Yeah, I gotcha. I gotcha. She does look like she would enjoy nine holes of golf. Yeah. I Pete: Yes. Jake: bet she wears the shit out of a visor. Yeah. Pete: She'd wear the visor and the knee socks, Jade. Jake: Our talk. Pete: You're right. No. She has no understanding of music at all. And that is a red flag, Jake, isn't it? Jake: Bit of a red flag. Yeah, well the the movie's certainly painting it as a huge red flag. So we're right off the bat we're we're supposed to be we're being told by the filmmaker these two are not compatible. Pete: We see several hints that these two are not, as you say, on the on the right wavelength together. Gail and Dalton, they are engaged to be married. It looks like Gail's come from money, she's come from a well to do family. And yeah, we get another little bit in the same scene where we get a bit of

exposition about what's going on with Dalton's life. He is about to leave his legal aid practice that he's been dealing with for several years and he's about to go to Wall Street. And work as a an attorney for one of the big Wall Street firms. And Gail's real excited about this. She is like, Well done, good luck, you're gonna be starting this new job soon. By the way, change that fucking tie, Dalton. That tie is disgusting. And not a s Jake: Get we get one of the late eighties, she'll open her mouth and and point her finger to it and do the thing like she's gonna barf. We don't see that at all anymore. That was a nice little artifact from yesteryear, dude. I loved it, right? Pete: Right. Yeah, you're right. Now they just say I've got the ick. That tie gives me the ick, wouldn't they? Jake: That gives me the egg. Pete: She's supposed to be f Jake: I don't heavy metal. By the way, the fit in this, I I I'm I think we need to bring this back, Pete. Like the the light jeans, the light blue jeans, the the button down and the tie in the sport coat. I miss like that that casual what what what would call that? Like business casual where blue jeans in a tie? That's that's a fucking great fit, man. Pete: It's not it's not business casual though, is it? You wouldn't turn up to a meeting in your blue jeans and a and a suit jacket and a tie. No. That would be something for that's drinks with people after work. It's like a work social event kind of thing that you could get away with that possibly. But Jake: A Saturday. Gotcha. Gotcha. Pete: after the golf tournament, that kind of thing. He's not into Gail at the minute, it seems, because Gail is like Gail doesn't like his tie and Gail walks off and Dawson says, Well, I I really like this tie Jake: But we get introduced to John C. McGinley, Pete. John C. McGinley's in this movie. Pete: He is. Yeah. What do you know him from? Jake: I know him best from the from the role of Doctor Cox on the show Scrubs. he was on that program for a long time, yeah. So John C. McKinley, what do you make of this actor? Do you know this actor from anything else? I know him from Scrubs. What about you? Pete: Yeah, well I'm I wasn't a big fan of Scrubs. I I've seen a couple of episodes, so I did recognise him from that. But I knew him more from Plato. he plays Yeah, he's a brown nose in the movie to the evil lieutenant in Platoon. Yeah, he's a bit of a whiner. He he comes across as quite annoying. But that's really the movies he he does turn up though, doesn't he? Qu quite often in eighties and nineties movies, just as just as a character actor. Jake: Yeah, I find that he's one of those actors that no matter what he's in, he's going to swing for the fucking fences. I think he there there's a very specific formula where John C. McGinley fits in. I love his work, but every time he does a performance in a movie like this, it's just it's just way over the top. Pete: He's not really necessary though, is he, to this movie, Jake? So the plot

of the movie. I think you could dispense with him and just have Patricia Carb Carbonot, whatever her name is, Charbonneau, turn up in i in his spot and she could do both things quite easily. Jake: Yeah, I think you're right. I but I think we need I guess we need someone here to let the audience know that Susan and Dalton had once dated. And that's this whole little beat. So they're having lunch beers on the pier. Pete: Of course they are. It's the eighties. Jake: It's the eighties. Yeah. We're gonna have we're gonna knock back a couple of bottles and we're gonna have a hot dog on the pier and that's lunch. Pete: Eleven thirty on a Wednesday. Fuck it. Let's get a couple of beers and let's go back to work. You doing anything this afternoon? Yeah, a bit of squash. That's about it. Jake: what they're doing is they're basically negotiating settlements, these two. I guess one works for the DA's office and the other one is a public defender. So it's like a they're just trying to figure out what their how their cases are gonna wind up. Peter Weller's character's like, Look, I want these guys to walk, and John C. McGinley's like, Okay, well we can we can do that if you buy the next six lunches. And Weller's like, Yeah, yeah, that's fine. And John C. McGinley's like, hot damn, all right. That's a deal. I would hate to think that the fate of your life depends on these two guys bartering your sa your sentences in prison with hot dogs and beer. Pete: It's a stunning indictment of the American judicial system, J. Jake: The nineteen eighties criminal system. Yeah. It's whoa. Shit was wild back then. Pete: It was. But then who who do we get turn up here, Jake? We get Susan. This is the introduction of Susan, and we find out that she has been given the position of assistant DA, assistant district attorney in New York. So she's now a big Whig. And we find out also that she used to be an old flame for daughter. Jake: It's clear that Dalton still has a big old boner for Susan 'cause she comes up and says, Do you look good in that suit? And he goes, You don't exactly look like chop liver yourself. Some great lines in this movie. I don't know who wrote it. I I was trying to look up the the two writers. The director and shares a writing credit with one other guy, and I went to look back on what else that they've done, and it's not much. I've not even heard of half the stuff that's on this the the list that comes from this director. But there's just something about the writing in this. Pr and we'll get to it when we have some scenes between Peter Weller and Sam Elliott. It's just like who fucking wrote this? This is wild. Pete: Well we get we get a little bit of a little hint of that, don't we, in the next scene. We get the dead man identified officially as a New York cop. We find out that he was perhaps undercover, doing an undercover fake out for this, you know, Michael Jones character in the park and something went wrong. But they are treating Michael Jones as the suspect in the killing, as a murder suspect. So it wasn't self-defense, it would have been straight murder. They he murdered a cop and this is why all the cops are very angry. Apparently we heard on the on the T V also that there's been three or four other murders of cops in recent times. So they're a little bit on edge, then they're as they do gang together. But then we get Dalton who comes to the jail and he is appointed as the lawyer, the public defender for Michael Jones, the crack dealer. Jake: It's basically like the holding cells at the jail and there's an officer on duty who's walking around delivering the lunches to all these guys that are in the cells. And he comes up to this guy who's in there obviously for some white collar crime and he goes, Here's your lunch. Would you like a condom with your lunch? And the guy's like, What? And and they're like it came down from the top that I'm supposed to distribute condoms with lunch and educate the prisoners on safe sex. And this like guy in a suit, little white guy in a suit's like, No, I don't want a condom. And then behind him, this big black dude walks over to the bars and goes, I'll take a condom and then makes eye contact with him. Pete: Yeah, just looks down at this guy in the suit. Give me the condom. So Dalton has taken the case as the public defender. He i it's his job to try and get Michael Jones off. And he has a chat with Michael Jones, listens to what his story is, and he's very believable. Jones is like, you know, the guy never pulled a badge. He pulled a gun and that's when I pulled my gun and that's what happened. We just shot each other. luckily I shot him better and he's dead and I'm not. But he I didn't know he was a cop. And Dalton's like Jake: Dalton's definitely on the case for this one. He wants to prove the innocence of this drug dealer. Regardless of whether or not the drug dealer is is a good person, a bad person, whatever. It's just Dalton's bent to make sure that he doesn't go away for a crime he doesn't commit. So this is the this is really like I s the the honorable trait of this Peter Weller character. He will try to do right by justice. I really like the performance coming from the the Michael Jones character here. I think this is this is really great. This is engaging. He's he's got a great presence on screen. Every line he says has that sing songiness about it. I I'm in. I'm I'm I'm enjoying it. Pete: Yeah, he's a very sympathetic criminal, isn't he? You you feel for him. the guy was out there, trying to earn money, selling cracks for the kids, just trying to get a bit of money in his in his pocket so that he can then buy his children some food. He's working hard, it's night time, dangerous environment, and you know, the poor guy gets jumped by this crooked cop. I mean, this is kind of I'm on cyborgs guy, Jake. Jake: Me too, me too. I'm right there with him. Yeah, let's sell some more crack. This guy's just trying to feed his family. What are we doing? Pete:

That's right. Jake: We cut from the jail where we understand the real plight of Michael Jones and w we we cut to a movie theater with some bullshit action movie playing on the screen and we find that Sam Elliott's just having a little bit of a doze with a with a with an empty can of beer in his hand. Pete: Yeah, I'm not sure if he's just having a doze, is he? Isn't this his usual place that he sleeps at night? He goes into this Jake: that on my notes. does he fucking live in a movie theater? What's going on here? Pete: think well I think so because after the movie finishes he gets up, it's morning time, he says hello to Charlie, who's like the cleaner there. Hi Charlie. Charlie's like, Yeah, how you doing, you know, how you doing there, buddy? And they know each other, so they're familiar with each other. Then he goes to the public restroom in the cinema, he opens like this little secret cabinet thing, like it's a power like a power socket thing. Jake: Yeah, it's the fuse box. He opens the fuse box and in there is a can of baking soda, a toothbrush, and he just starts brushing his teeth with baking soda. Pete: Does he not get paid a wage by the New York City Council or whatever it is? Does he not get paid to be a cop? 'Cause he is a cop. We never see his house, we never see where he lives, we never see any of his like relatives, we don't know if he's married or anything like that. So he's got no home life at all in this. he is married. Jake: Yeah, it's a it's a bit of dialogue in this scene. But real quick, if I if I can just mention and I I don't mean to nitpick everything, but there's just so much weird decision making happening in this movie. We know that Sam Elliott is is sleeping andor living in this movie theater. He's in a public restroom and in walks someone into the public restroom and his first instinct is to turn and pull a gun on them. What the fuck are you doing, Sam Elliott? who's after you? What's going on here, man? Yeah. So Wa Dalton will come in and immediately Sam Elliott whips around and and points his big old pistola at him and Peter Weller's like, I'm white and I can't fight. It's like, God. But Pete: How did how did Dalton know that Marks was gonna be there? Jake: Dalton will come in and say, Your I talked to your wife. She says she wants you to come home. She said I could find you here. She says if you don't if you don't get back to th there soon, she's gonna take all your stuff and she's gonna send it back to Hoke poke shoot boot wherever whatever town c you came from in Texas. Pete: He would obviously prefer to live in this filthy twenty four hour cinema and clean his teeth in this public restroom rather than go home to see his wife in their house. Is it that bad at home? Jake: Yeah, I don't know, man. I would love to see what Sam Elliott's wife looks like in this. It would be funny if she was just the perfect housewife. If she just was like, she's got a pie cooling on the windowsill right now, just hoping that he comes

home. He's like, I can't be in that house anymore. This bit of dialogue and the coming bit of dialogue really sh solidifies the fact that these two are buddies. Pete: I we get the impression, don't they sort of intimate that these guys know each other from school, from school days, they've known each other for a long time? Jake: Yeah, since high school. Pete: Yeah, so they are they're good buddies, they sort of trust each other. And I think what Dalton's trying to do here, it seems, is he's trying to get a different perspective on what sort of really happened in in the New York police force. Is this kind of thing usual? is there a lot of corruption going on? Is there a lot of people getting moped by cops, you know, for their drugs? Jake: During his his first meeting with Michael Jones, Michael Jones lets out a line that says, Yeah, it was stopped by some blue jean cop. We're having this whole beat between these two guys. They leave the restroom and they're going out into the lobby of the movie theater, which Pete: What was playing? Did did did you see what was playing as well on the cinema? Jake: On on the marquee? The marquee says Nightmare on Elm Street three. Pete: That dream warriors? Jake: That was Dream Warriors, yeah, yeah. Pete: Yeah, I like that movie. Jake: It's it's a fun one. Pete: Dalton is asking Richie Marks, he's saying, Look, do you know anything about these blue jean cops? is that a thing? Yeah. Jake: Yeah, and Dalton goes, Yeah, I'm a I'm strictly bargain bin Levis and Wranglers. Pete: You mean Richie Marks as a Jake: What did I say? Pete: Dawn? Jake: Me. I g like I'm getting mixed up because Dalton is the name of the character from Roadhouse. And Pete: House. Jake: so I'm triangulating the that back to Sam Elliott. And I just so I just see Sam Elliott and I go, Dalton, Sam Elliott, Dalton. But Sam Elliott is basically, yeah, I'm strictly Wranglers and Levi's. And Weller's like, Well, what does that mean? He goes, Well, you know, a lot of the guys I bust are wearing Gucci and you know, they're they're wearing designer stuff. And Weller's like, Well, I don't follow. And he goes, Sam Elliott's like, Well, think about it, man. you're a beat cop. You never had a big bust in your life. You're just grinding out your twenty s twenty seven thousand a year, and all of a sudden you're put on some narcotics division and you come in contact with a bag of chemicals. Well, that bag of chemicals is worth more than ten years of your salary. So what do you do? Next day you're out shopping for designer jeans. The the ability for these narcotics cops to make quick, easy money. is is out there and it's a very difficult thing to turn down once it's presented to you. So he's basically saying that yeah, this these these narcotics cops, a lot of them are crooked and a lot of them are are getting their cash grabs from these huge drug busts. Pete: And he also says they're also quite stupid because they don't know how to hide or launder this money that they get. So he says the best thing you can do, Dalton, is go and check out the crooked cop's house, the one that got shot in the park, and see if he's hidden his his cash in his house somewhere. Do Jake: Dude, great little bit of food here too. We get the nice movie theater popcorn and then we get a fucking New York City street dog. Hell yeah, man. We get a nice New York City dog. Yeah, and a can of Pepsi. And the old style logo on that can, man, that brings me back. Pete: Richie Marks is now thinking about what's going on in his department in New York. is there a lot of corruption going on? How are these guys making so much money? maybe he needs to have a little look into this himself. The next scene we have, Jake, is we are introduced to the corrupt cops that we have just been sort of talking about. These are the narcotics cops, they're plaincloth. They are driving through somewhere in it's like Brooklyn in New York, and they have an informant in the car. So we've got three crooked cops and one informant. Jake: Yeah, so we get these four fucking goons in this car, and I fucking love this. I like this I feel like this whole episode is just gonna be me like, yeah, I love it. Wow, New York. But I love the way this scene is shot. The the camera's outside the car looking in, you see all four characters, and we're introduced to this main bad guy cop. did you catch this guy? What'd you think of Thomas G. Waits, his Officer Kelly? Pete: Yeah, he sports a fantastic mullet in this movie. It is a mane, isn't it, that he has. But no, th these guys in this car and the informant are seemingly we ha we have this little bit of conversation in this car for about two or three minutes, and all of them are just arguing, all of them are angry, all of them are just horrible individuals, swearing, telling each other they're just horrible people. One of them asks, Could you have a cigarette? and he goes, Buy them your fucking self. You d you d they just don't like each other. They're really really like honory, all of these guys just shouting and and screaming at each other. But Jake: Main bad one is played by Thomas G. Waits, and I love his character in this movie. The most scuzzy New York of New York accents in this. He's like, I'm gonna put you, I'm gonna cut your bulls off and put you in prison with a big bull Nwood f Gasqueen. you're gonna get Gasqueen. It's just so goddamn good. And yeah, like the first the first bit that we see is this guy, this officer Kelly, the main bad guy cop. He's smoking a cigarette and it's not even like three, like it's it's not even a quarter of the way smoked. And he takes he ch chucks it out the window. And then he has a little altercation with Stevie Shitboy or whatever they call him. What is it? Stevie Shithead? Pete: the the informant. Jake: Yeah, yeah. He's like, Hey, shut the fuck up back there and form it and then he comes back in and peace and he's like, Give me another cigarette, will you? Pete: If you're smoking if you're

having three pools and then throwing it out of your car window, no I'm not gonna give you one of my cigarettes that you can waste. These are all horrible guys, Jake. This is what we're seeing. These corrupt cops, they're nasty, they are mean, they don't even like each other or trust each other. Jake: Are going to be the baddies. So then we cut to this weird nightclub seed, Pete. What did you make of this thing? Pete: This club is called Wonderland and they have a quite a mean security system to go into this club. So they they've got like a metal detector going through the door. They have to before they even get into the place, they have to show some money that they've got money. And we've got like two looks like two young boys, two young girls, I I say young, like teen teenage, twenties, early twenties possibly. When they get in through after all this security, we see that this place is just an absolute Club of debauchery, Jake. There's drugs going on there, people smoking drugs, people smoking crack. Doesn't look like the kind of place you'd you you'd take your grandmother, Jake. Jake: Not not the type of place I want to go, Peter. yeah. I'm expecting some real hip sort of club like atmosphere. And this looks like they had just built the set that morning out of cardboard boxes and cheap paint that they got from the Home Depot. It it it looks awesome. Pete: We see the proprietor. We were introduced to the proprietor of the place through a young wasted girl who is looking for her next fix. She's like, Hey she goes up to some sort of guy who's standing there, looks like one of the bouncers. Hey, I'm Is it a James Barney one? He does. Yeah. Jake: He looks like a James Bossoon. this is this is the movie's Jaws or Odd Job. It's just like the guy that works for the boss that has some weird ability or power. I don't know. Pete: Yeah, he's the heavy, isn't he, in in this movie. This young lady is desperate, Jake. Jake: It is funny because it's this young looking blonde girl who's just walking around in a cocktail dress holding a crack pipe and just being like, I spent all my money, but I sure would like some more crack. And so she goes up to this bouncer and and she's like, Can I talk to the boss? Cause I need some more crack. He's like, You don't want to do that. Trust me, you don't want to do that. She's like, Well, no, I really need some more. So he's like, All right. And he lets her into the the office. So we get a little beat with the with the main bad guy. He's in there counting money. Smoking a cigar. Pete: Grossed over who the main bad guy is, Jake. Who is this yeah? It's Huggy Bear dude. It's the pimp, the the comedic pimp from Starsky and Hutch. Yeah, he is the main bad guy. Jake: Yeah, this is Antonio Fargas playing playing the the main bat in this in this flick, as Pete says, Huggy Bear, and he has a great performance in this. I love this this guy, this character. Just a dastardly fuck, but man, he's entertaining to watch. Pete: He's as you say, he's sitting behind his big desk in his office and he's counting his money and this young wafe comes in asking for more. She's like, what was it? please, sir, can I have some more what's his name? The Orphan? Jake: Oliver Twist. Pete: Oliver Twist. Yeah, she's like Oliver Twist. I I need some more crack in my pipe. Jake: Again, you got a lot to learn about your own culture, Pete. Pete: No I need some more crack, Huggy Bear, and I'm willing to do anything for it. I see you have a young stud in your office who is he's got his white trousers on and his crotch is pointing straight at me. He looks like he's ready to go. And so Huggy Bear's like, Hey, you need some crack? I can give you some crack, but you're gonna have to service my buddy here. He needs his pipes cleaned. Jake: What a great boss. What an outstanding boss. Pete: It's funny. Jake: Like she comes in, she's like, I don't have any money, but I want more crack. And he goes, Well, there are other ways you can pay. And you can pay by fucking my personal assistant. He's been pent up for weeks. He's been scratching at the door trying to get out. So can you just please, you know, open the valve on this guy for me? Calm him down a little bit. Pete: Pans round him, doesn't it? The camera pans round the room and then it pans to this guy who's like, Yeah, baby, this is my lucky day. He's got a big smile on his face, he's got this white suit, he's like, yeah. Mr. Nicky is his name, the guy who owns Wonderland, that's his name in the middle. Jake: That's good stuff. Yeah, Mr. Nikki. Yeah. Yeah. So Richie will show up to the car that these that these four idiots were in. the informant runs off, and now it's it's the four cops. So it's Richie and the three corrupt cops. And the corrupt cops will open the trunk and it's just a fucking armory in there. It's like shotguns, submachine guns, everything a growing boy needs. And there's two grenades sitting in there. Officer Kelly will be like, Come on, Richie, you see something you like in there. And Richie will pick up. Two hand grenades, two live hand grenades just traveling around in a trunk in New York City. Is that standard operating ordinance for the b New York City, the NYPD in the eighties? Just fucking hand grenades. Pete: also they're just rolling around in the back, aren't they? They're not in a case or anything. They're just rolling around in the trunk of this car. If they go around a sharp corner, that's that's it. It's game over, isn't it? Jake: Yeah. Yeah, that needs to be in a pelican case or something. They can't just have that just clanking around back in that trunk. Come on. So he'll pull out these watches and he'll go, These two watches are synchronized. All right. You take one and we'll take the other. At exactly eleven eleven, you storm the back, we'll storm the front. And everyone's like, cool, brick. You know, we're gonna go do it. So Richie and one of the other goons will go around the back. Pete: It's lucky that Richie Marks

grabbed the blue jean cop grabbed the grenades. Otherwise they'd be fucked, wouldn't they? They'd get to this door and they'd go, How are we gonna get in here? No idea. But luckily they've bought a a shaped charge kind of device where they put these grenades and then they put this charge it's like a metal case and they pop it onto the door and it basically just blows the door off of its hinges. Jake: It's eleven eleven. Everybody charges this place and they're just r shooting rounds into the ceiling of this club. Pete: They go and arrest Nikki. W they storm into Nikki's little office and we see the guy in the white the the white suit and this poor crackhead girl. They are on a bed in Nikki's office and he's kind of watching them. A little Jake: Mm-hmm. Pete: bit weird. Yeah. Jake: Nobody's in there and they're just like don't worry, do you think do you think they'll hear us? No, we closed the curtain around the bed. Everything's gonna be fine. Pete: Degenerate behavior. They're heathens, Jake. Thank goodness we've got the corrupt cops and Richie Marks coming in to tidy this place up. And that's exactly what they do. They they basically ch they get everybody out and they arrest Nikki as the main bad guy, take his money away, and then they say to Richie Marks, they say, Okay, Richie, we've got it from here. You take Nikki, the big boss, down to the station and you get him charged. We've got things from here. Jake: He doesn't take Nikki to the station. He takes him directly to night court is what it looks like. I think the the the judge even says it's like it's eleven fifty at night. Well, they just storm the place at eleven eleven. So you mean to tell me that they just pick this guy Nikki up, they they process him, they do all the paperwork, and he's nestled in the courtroom just forty minutes later, forty minutes, that's all it takes. The gears of justice turned pretty quickly in the eighties. Pete: Yes, they did, yes. you would have criminals locked up within you'd have criminals locked up before they actually did any crime, Jake, in the eighties. Jake: We we get this little courtroom scene and the judge is like, I'm setting your bail and by the way, this judge is the most limp dick character in this movie. Just this bald bearded of a judge sitting up there. He's like, The bail will be set for a million dollars and we get Susan Cartel in there as well, the old flame of Dalton, and she's like, Hey, listen, you know who this guy is? This is fucking Huggy Bear. He owns the entire crack empire in New York City. He's got A million dollars is pocket change to this guy and the judge is like is there a man I can talk to? Qui can can someone tell their wife to pipe down? Pete: Ha ha. Jake: Because I did I fucking stutter. It's it's a million dollars. And so he bangs his gavel, and sure enough, they walk up with a briefcase full of cash, which is obviously how you do it, right? If your bail is set, you go and you show the judge that you can make bail with

a suitcase full of a million dollars. That's Pete: It works. Jake: stupid. So he he makes bail and Huggy Bear's walking out of the courtroom and he's just got two ladies with him, like his entourage, like Hey ladies, I just got arrested. You need to come down to the courthouse with me. And also, Sam Elliott's just sitting in there like he's in his movie theater. He's like, God, I want to be anywhere but home. Let me just sit in this courtroom and make sure Huggy Bear goes to jail. Pete: Yeah, and he failed in that attempt. Huggy Bear is out on the street again after posting his one million cash bail, Jake. No problem Jake: While this is all going on, Dalton is on his own adventure because based on a tip from Richie, Richie said, Hey, if you want to find out if this guy was crooked, go check out his house. If this cop that got killed in the park was actually a crooked cop, go look at his house because i if if he was crooked, he's gonna have something there that is way outside of his price range, of his budget. For sure he was crooked. Pete: He meets the the wife of the dead cop. He has a little look around the house surreptitiously, can't find any money just glaringly, on the mantelpiece or anything like that. So he decides that the garage is probably where it's going to be. So he decides to come back that night and breaks into the garage. And he finds within the garage a beautiful, nice red Porsche 911 turbo. So he knows that this guy's been on the take. He's like a normal person. cop, he shouldn't be able to afford having a a Porsche in his garage. O'Leary's wife gives Larry a call at the evidence locker and she says to Larry, hey Larry, somebody has somebody's broken into the garage and they've seen the Porsche that's there. And Larry on the other end of the phone is like, shit, somebody's on to us now. We better be careful. And he puts the phone down, said, I've not got time to talk to you yet. Jake: This is David Proval, is the actor's name. So as Margaret O'Leary is talking to David Proval, talking to Richie Capri, in comes Richie Marks, Sam Elliott, and he's like, Hey, I want to see the the evidence that we locked up last night. And Larry's like, it's it's in there, it's all there. And he goes, Sam Elliott's like, Are you sure? It was a lot of cash. And there's a great line from David Pravall, like, yeah, it was a lot of cash, but it wasn't a lot of cash. Pete: Next thing is we get a cutscene with Richie Marks and Dalton, who are in a bar. My goodness me, we get a quite a long a long story from Sam Elliott in this scene, don't we, Jake? Do you remember what he says? Yeah. Jake: Yeah. And I feel like if it was Brandon editing this movie, this scene's getting cut. my god. Pete: It's Jake: It it serves nothing to the plot of this movie other than just tightening the bond between these two. And the the the great thing about this though is there's some wild Okay, so we've seen the that weird breakfast shake that he makes in the beginning. He's eaten popcorn every chance he can, his Pierre Weller. And he comes into this bar and his drink order is absurd. He comes in and he goes, I'll have double of whatever he's having. And the bartender looks at him and goes, A quadruple boiler maker. And Peter Weller doesn't blame doesn't bat an eye. He goes, Yep, and a Pepsi. And sure enough, to the table comes a beer and a and a and a quadruple shot of whiskey. These two have just had a fucking day, right? They're both pretty banged up from the goings-on in their lives. Peter Weller committed a felony and Richie Mark just watched the drug kingpin of New York walk. So they're they're they're having having a moment. Dalton comes in and goes, Man, life is complicated. There was a time where all I wanted to do was play the tenor sacks. That's all I wanted to do forever. But everyone called me a sap and that there was no money in it. Now I'm a lawyer. And look at where look at where my life's at. And I thought that one day I might meet the love of my life. And at that, Richie's like, Well, I met the love of my life once. Pete: Yeah, apparently he met the love of his life at Shakespeare in the park. Jake: Well, both yeah. Pete: reminded me of Frank Drebin. Do you remember Frank Drebin and Shakespeare in the Park and what happened there? Same thing. He meets this girl and they get on really well. And he says that they go back to her apartment and in her apartment she goes off and fixes him a drink. And while he's there on his own in in in the apartment, she's got a huge dog, apparently massive dog. We don't we don't know what kind of dog it is, but I'm kind of thinking Great Dane, you know, this kind of huge dog. And he just says, so yeah, he he's finds a ball and he throws a ball for the dog and the dog runs after the ball, brings it back to him, so he goes, I threw it harder. So he threw the ball and he says, I didn't realise that the window was open and also that we're on the sixteenth floor of this apartment block. So all I heard was the dog scratching on the waxy floor and that was it. So apparently he's thrown the ball out of the window and the dog had jumped out of the window from the the sixteenth floor and he said it landed on a car below. So when he popped his head out to have a look at this mess that he's created with this dead dog on a car, he then throws up on the dead dog and on the crushed car and what a fucking mess he's made here, Jake. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ. And then he says he says before this last bit he says, he goes, Yeah, I left before e ever telling her that she was the one. So he just killed her dog, thrown up out of her window, then just fucks off out of the apartment. I like it. Jake: This whole monologue that that is is spoken by Sam Elliott, this is not his speed. And I can't tell if it's, you know, you you can't really blame the actor. This is all what's on the page, right? Because this story that he's telling is just unbelievable. And Sam Elliott, you can like almost

look into his eyes in this scene and just he's thinking, I'm saying this bullshit, but goddammit, they're paying me. Like he's just like paycheck, paycheck, paycheck, paycheck. Paycheck, paycheck, paycheck. you're not even trying, Sam Elliott. Come on. Pete: I was thinking though, maybe this woman, I mean, he doesn't know much about her. He's just met her at Shakespeare in the Park. They've gone back to her apartment. You know, they're just about to get drinks. He's met the dog and killed the dog. but he doesn't know anything about this woman at all. She may have been looking after the dog for a neighbour. She may she may have had this dog for like, I don't know, three years and it's eating her out of house and home and she fucking hates the thing. You never know. Jake: But this next little beat that we get is like the NYPD coming and and letting Dalton know that they're on to him. This is so so dumb. Pete: Well, after Dalton has left the bar that he was talking to Marks, he leaves the bar to walk home in New York and walks p walks through a little bit of Central Park and he is surrounded by uniformed cops who just sort of come out nowhere and they all surround him. There's about ten of them and they just intimidate him. He looks around, he looks a bit scared. And then they just wander off. They don't really do anything at all. But they just wanna give him the message, look, hey, we're on to you. We know that you are defending this piece of shit that we think, you know, killed our our brother, cop in the park, and we're on to you. We're gonna we're gonna make sure that you don't get what you want, basically. Jake: I want I would love to be on the fly of the wall on that meeting that they had before they did this whole thing because it's choreograph, right? they have a plan on what they're gonna do to try to spook this guy. And I would love to see the officer like it's like a officer McKinley and he's like, Yeah, we're gonna go up there and we're gonna hit him in the kneecap. Yeah, we're gonna beat him. And another guy's like, Well, no, what what about if we went up and we just sprayed him with pepper spray, just doused him with pepper spray? And then the other cop goes, How about we all get together? We walk up there in a circle, and we take out our billy clubs and slap our hands with our billy clubs as we walk around And we're like that's that's not threatening at all. That seems a little like you know, performative, don't you think? No, it'll be great. We all walk at the same speed and march. Pete: Yeah. It is a funny little bit there, but they don't they they don't do anything to Dawn. Dawn gets away with his life still just to warn him, just a warning for Dawn. Jake: He'll look over and he'll see that Officer McMullett is sitting there in a in a parked squad car with his blues and twos going, just making eye contact. We know who's who's calling the shots and who's pulling the strings. This next little bit though, we get Sam Elliott accosting

one of the doormen at the Wonderland Club. And this to me just shouts Sam Elliott is kind of in over his head as an action hero, I think. Pete: I ignored all of this bit. I don't think this was relevant really, but go on, go ahead and Jake: Like this like watching this twice, this is the part that really drag, and I think it's by virtue of the fact that Sam Elliott as an action hero, it's not really his avenue. I think he's much better in Westerns or you know, I think he's great in in Roadhouse, playing like the aging bouncer guy. But for him to be like a a cop that's really throwing his weight around, I don't think it's his speed at all. I just don't buy it. but he'll he'll basically interrogate this kid that's sitting outside where where Nikki is, just trying to ask where is the the new base of operations. They did a bust on Wonderland and he knew that that's where all the crack and the money was being routed out of. They've moved that operation somewhere else. Sam Ellen's trying to figure out where it is. So this is just the whole thing. He'll throw this kid onto the hood of Huggy Bear's car. He'll pull a gun, put a gun to his face, and the kid will tell him the where the location of the new hub of operations for this crack cartel in the city. That's basically. Pete: Yeah, and it happens to be a new a new place called New Amsterdam Theatre. is that the one? I believe it is. Jake: Yeah, I th yeah, yeah. And this is it turns out this is just a like a straight up brothel. Pete: Yeah. Yeah. I mean this is a funny old place. they sell like videos and Jake: Yeah. Pete: Yeah, and wank mags, and the ground floor and then the upper floor. There's a gate. Jake: He's like, Real girls in the flesh. We you check out Tiffany in booth two. Check out Karina in in window five. Like he's really trying to sell tickets to this thing. Pete: A really busy brothel. there's just a ton of guys in trench coats walking around in this place. We find the informant has gone into this place that we saw earlier in the car with the corrupt cops, and he is getting himself a girl for the night, and apparently what he likes is he likes to be tied up, apparently, to the bed frame and you know, faux faux whipped by like a little a little leather whip. one of these girls in this in this brothel. So that's what he does. He goes in there, he pays his money and he gets himself a room. Jake: The honeymoon suite. He comes in. He knows the guy who's doing the bookings of the rooms by name. He comes in, he's like, Ira! I got a big score. I've got all this cash. And Ira's like gets on the walkie talking. He's like, Hey, Larry, open up the honeymoon suite for Stevie. And he comes skipping in there. And God, this guy's such a fucking dirtbag, dude. He goes walking into this brothel. He picks out a chicken. He goes, This is what I got. And it's a it's a vial full of crack cocaine. And then he lifts up a set of handcuffs and whips and chains and he goes, And this is what I want. And they go off to do their little BDSM exercise. Pete: Yeah, this guy is not the sort of guy you'd bring home to meet your mother, is he, Jake? He he seems seems like a bit of a nefarious character. Not very nice. Jake: I see a lot of myself in this guy. Pete: Really? Jake: No, of course not. But yeah. In comes so th Stevie, this this guy that's getting the honeymoon suite, he's an informant, right, for the for the police. And it turns out that the big bouncer guy that was at Wonderland is on to him. He wants to silence Stevie to prevent any more information leaking from Nikki's operation to the wrong cops. So in walks the big bad, the big bouncer guy, and we find out that this big bouncer guy has superpowers. Isn't that right, Pete? Pete: Yeah, he does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He wants to find out where this informant is, which room he is, and the guy behind the desk is like, Well, no. You know, the they pay their money for privacy. You know, he's having his good time. You can touch him when he comes when he comes down. This big bouncer guy goes, Nope. And he just reaches in and he grabs the bars off of this kind of little window on this office, reaches through and just grabs this guy by the neck and just lifts him off his feet with one hand. Jake: One hand. He incredible hulks the wall away and just lifts this dude up with one hand. It's just okay. I guess now this is in the movie. We have people with legitimate super strength in the flick. This is amazing. Pete: Yeah, I do think how Jake: We're about like for the gentle listener, we're about half an hour into this movie and now we're being introduced to just some ridiculous shit. Up until now it's been pretty much like a crooked cop sort of drama investigative thing. And this is where the movie will just nosedive into absurdity and just strap in, ladies and gentlemen, because it is a wild ride from here on out. Pete: Yeah, you you are correct. It doesn't make a great deal of sense, does it, this whole little bit here? So what we have is Nikki's fixer comes in, he finds the informant strapped to this bed frame. It's a metal bed frame. The inf that Nikki Nikki's bouncer guy gets some electric cables from the wall. They're live cables and he electrocutes the bed frame, therefore electrocuting the informant. Who is on the bed and strapped to it, kills him. The girl in the room goes, my god, you're not gonna kill me too. And he goes, No, you're right, baby, you're fine. and then he exits the room gives her the finger gun. And then he exits the room and goes down the stairs. But before he makes it out, doesn't Marx turn up there? Is it Marks that turns up as well there? Jake: Yeah, so after Richie Mark gets the location of the new central hub, he calls Dalton in the middle of the night and is like, Here's where we're going, are you in? And Dalton's like, I'm down. So they are in pursuit. They arrive shortly after the incredible Hulk pulled the wiring off the side of the building and electrocuted the informant. And

so they're gonna go up and discover basically the fricasy body of Stevie. Pete: What do they what do they actually see? What do we see? So we see Marks and Dalton go into the room, they see this guy fried on the bed. Richie Marks then puts his head out of the window, anticipating that the killer will be walking out at that exact instant, and that's what he does. But the guy's just walking out of there from a very busy brothel. I I'm assuming because he's the only black guy that he can see on the street, Richie Marks then goes, You stop So he doesn't know this guy from Adam. He's not seen him before, right? He's never met this this black bouncer before. He doesn't know who he is. He doesn't know that this is the guy that's just murked this informant. And he is not running. He doesn't have a gun out, anything like that. He's just walked out of this brothel like everybody else has just walked out of the brothel. But he is in instantly identified as the killer by Marx. And then, even more outrageously, we have three cop cars just turn up Obviously they somebody's called them from within the brothel over the last couple of minutes after discovering this body, perhaps. But they d they also don't know who killed him and who this black guy is. But they see the black guy on the street, amongst many other people on the street, mostly white, and they go, You're black, it must be you. We're gonna start shooting at you. So they get their guns out and they go, You hawk, black guy over there, it must be you. They're like psychic cops, basically. They can turn up and they go, This guy's got bad intentions. Let's let's arrest him. They've got no other nothing else that they're going on at all. I just found it really amusing. Jake: And what does he do, Pete? He just from his from the sleeves of his dashiki come these two Uzies and he just he plugs all the cops and then he turns to the innocent bystanders who are just watching and he mows those people down as well. Just a dastardly evildoer, this guy. Pete: He just randomly mows down some unlucky NPCs who were just perhaps walking by on the street. It's just crazy. No reason at all. Then he jumps in the cop's car and floors it and and and gets away. And this is where Marks and Dalton decide they they're gonna give chase. Jake: Yeah, this is the first action beat of the movie. Pete: They chase through the st streets of New York City, don't they? chase this cop car and smash up loads of stuff on the way. Jake: I do like this little bit. I like this action beat. All the way from, Sam Elliott climbing out the window and getting to the street by a collapsing, what is it like a neon light apparatus? Yeah. Right. Pete: Yeah, that's true. Jake: In pursuit of this guy in a dashiki. It's a heart pounding action scene. And we do get Peter Weller coming out with a pistol and he's like, you drive, I'll shoot. So this is another like buddy cop, buddy, buddy moment. They're in pursuit of this guy. They wind up chasing him off a bridge. And we get some fantastic nineteen eighties pyrotechnics here. For some reason in the eighties it was easy you could you could ignite a car's gas tank with a single bullet in the eighties. Everything was a lot more flammable in the eighties for some reason. Pete: Yeah, you're right. Everything goes up like an absolute firework in this movie. So he crashes the cop car and sort of dives out of it and then Marx turns up with his huge magnum and he shoots the cop car and it just blows up like he has shot a stick of dynamite. Yeah. Jake: And it absolutely barbecues the guy in the dash shiki. So he's he's been removed from play altogether, which thank God because this fucking super soldier would be running around New York otherwise. Pete: Fire will kill him. Jake: Now we cut to the locker room at the local precinct where we have Richie Marks kind of polishing his big old magnum in walks, Detective Mullett, and Detective Mullet is now wearing like a Versace suit. When we first meet this guy in the movie, he's wearing street clothes in SCSI New York. And now he comes in looking like he's just walked off of Wall Street. So, you know, are are we getting suspicious? I'd say. Pete: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We s we soon, yeah. Jake: So this is a little moment where duh Detective Mullet looks over and sees Sam Elliott cleaning the pistol and he goes, Jesus Christ, that's a big gun. That's not that's not standard issue. That's not regulation. And Sam Elliott's like, This is the pistol I have to exercise my Second Amendment rights to bear arms. Okay. So the detective Mullet looks down, sees the bullets in their forty five magnums and he's Jesus Christ, what, you taking on an army? And there's this long pregnant pause where they're just staring at each other and Sam Elliott goes, I haven't decided yet. I'm on to you, motherfucker. It's a little beat where Sam Elliott's like, You better watch your back, bitch. Pete: W he he doesn't play by the rules, this guy Jake. He's a blue jean cop, he sleeps in cinemas, he's got a rat under his nose. This guy is an anarchist. Jake: He's a real wild card and he's up for a shakedown. Pete: Then we cut to the courthouse, don't we, Jake? We get the first scene, we switch to a court drama, and we get the opening statements for Michael's defence. So this is Dalton, the public defender, is the defence for Michael Jones. And he it's basically laid out that it's a self defence defence. The defence is that it's self defence. Jake: What do you what do you make of this little spiel that he gives the court? Do you find this a effective courtroom scene? A an effective opening statement from him? Pete: I think he does well. As as mentioned, I think his performance in this movie is pretty good. He's convincing. He drives the point home that he wants to make and seems pretty convincing. You never see the jurors though in this movie, ever. So we don't really know what they're thinking. Jake: Little beat that we have after his opening statement,

it's it's pretty fun. And I get such a kick out of the fact that they're doing this really almost heartfelt conversation about how things ended and why things ended. And John C. McKinley's just kinda like, you know, I'm still here, right? Would you really be talking about this with your colleague standing right there, like, Yeah, you know, baby, I was crazy about ya. Pete: Yeah, it's silly, isn't it? This Dalton says to Susan, I loved you more than anyone and you left me holding the bag and then we get this sort of kind of piano music wells up and everything goes nice and soft and they they reconnect again. They're like, I didn't you know as soon as basically he said this that he's like absolutely inept without her, he couldn't get on, he's terrible human being without her. As soon as she hears this, she's turned on and she's like, Okay, he's really needy. I can manipulate this guy, I think. So yeah, fine. You know, let's get back together. It's it's only when he becomes really fucking needy and tells her how much he misses her, how much he loves her. And in my experience, Jake, this doesn't help in a in the start of a relationship. It hinders. Jake: You think so, huh? They get the ick. Are you saying that that that it gives them the ick? Pete: Susan's not getting the ick, she's getting the dick, Jake. Jake: there it is, ladies and gentlemen. Okay. Pete: Then we cut to the illegal street race Jake at night time. We get the rednecks versus the drug dealer Nicky and his gang. Jake: Yeah, the crackers versus the drug dealers. Pete: He seems to have quite an eclectic interest, though, Jake, outside of his drug dealing. He does enjoy motorsport, it seems. Jake: This this is his idea of a good time, these street races. And even Detective Mullett will come up and be like, Hey, we got business to talk to and he goes, come on, can I at least watch the race first? And Detective Mullett's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not here to write parking tickets, so Pete: Or should he not have said, I'm not here to give speeding tickets? Jake: That's a better line, to be honest, dude. Pete: Yeah, and and also just just another point, we've got the sort of the team, the racing team that are going up against this redneck team and it's a team of Nickies, looks like underlings. And this is kind of before black people were depicted as super cool on screen, Jake. Did you did you see the way that these three guys entered the the picture? Jake: Yeah, the racing team they stoop forward and like, Hey, hey, yo, we're gonna win and the ADR of them be like, Yeah, we're winning, we're winning, yeah, we're winning. Pete: We're gonna win. Yo, let's go is what they say, Jake. Yeah. This is yeah, I mean it's a shame, isn't it? This was written by white people, this movie. And Nikki Nikki says, the Harlem shuffle, gonna kick the cracker's ears. So yeah, that's that's the plan. And that's what they do, Jake, isn't it? They win the race, the redneck's car blows up. Looks like there's something going on there, doesn't it? I think that they had done something to the car. What do you think? Jake: That's what I thought. Why else would the car just explode for no reason? Perhaps some foul play is happening here. Pete: They cut that, didn't they? They cut that little scene where the guy placed an incendiary device underneath the the car as it before it sped off in the race. But anyway, yeah, it explodes and fiery death ensues for the rednecks. And one of the one of the black guys shouts out, Tough luck, cracker. Nice. Nice work. We also get some instructions here, don't we, that are given from the Dirty cop from Mullock Cop and he gives the instructions to Nikki. He says, Nikki, we kept you out of out of jail or whatever, we're protecting you. You need to return the favour. What we need you to do is you need to take out Detective Richie Marks. He needs to be gone. He needs to be assassinated. And Nikki's like, Well, I'm your man, I can do that. Jake: So if he takes out Richie, the cops will will come completely onside onto Nicky's team to make sure whatever dealings he has are uninhibited by the enemy. Pete: I wouldn't believe them. If I was Huggy Bear in this situation, I would look at him with a side eye Jake and be like, Mullett, you're a corrupt cop. I don't believe that. You've not put this on in writing. Or is this a handshake deal? You can you can go and fuck off. Thank you. Jake: Yeah. He's like, Y you do your thing and I'll take care of Mark's pronto. Here we get another courtroom scene where Dalton really just tries to make a point and this doesn't go anywhere. Like I wanna see some real gotcha courtroom type stuff. This only gets to second base with me. It's like you weren't there, so you don't know what happened. That's all he had to say. That's all he has that's that's the only point he's trying to make. And after this little beat, we get another a little scene between Peter Weller and Susan where Susan just hands over a key to her apartment, Hey, we we got back together one time. Here's a key to my place and also tell your fiance to unmake your entire life. Pete: Yeah, and also this is just outside in the halls of the court, right? Outside the actual court itself. Yeah. It's the prosecutor and the defender smooshing in the halls of the court. I mean, surely people are taking notice of this, aren't they, Jake? Jake: It's the eighties. Everybody knows everybody. Like this is where they work day in, day out. So everybody in these halls is like, Yeah, I saw Jimmy down there necking with his ex girlfriend. You think we should get them a toaster for their wedding? What's going on? Pete: It's bizarre though, isn't it? You think, that somebody might go, Hey, you guys, bit a decorum here. Get a room. Yeah. Jake: Yeah, at least have a discreet affair. Don't put it out there for everybody to see. I don't want to see your smelly garbage. We're rapidly approaching the second big action beat of this movie. we get a shot of Sam

Elliott down on the pier just fishing, just having himself an evening, trying to catch a f a fish out of the filthy Hudson River. Pete: Where's he gonna cook this fucking fish though, Jake? They don't have any grills at the cinema. Jake: Gonna put it in the popcorn machine. Pete: Scoos me there, Dawin Jake: Can you Barbara, can you put this in the butter? Pete: But yeah, what happens? He so he's fishing away. Doesn't seem as though he's caught anything, but there's a couple of nefarious characters waiting on the pier for him when he's finished f fishing. So he walks up there, he b Marks being Marks, Rishi Marks, he's a top cop. So he spots these guys from quite a distance away and he knows that these are up to no good. Jake: Harmonica playing hoodlums accost Richie and he gets the best of toot sweet. this is Sam Elliott we're talking about. You can't just come at this guy with a knife and think everything's gonna be all right. So he basically takes down one of and then scares the other one so bad just by talking to him that he runs off into the into the public at Cody. Pete: What does he say? He's got a good line though, isn't he, in this bit, Sam Elliott? Jake: go on. Pete: Well, doesn't he say something like 'cause the guy's standing there, so the the he's taken down one of the perps already, he turns round to take the other one, the guy gets a knife out of his pocket, and Sam Elliott says to him, Yeah, you see an old man here, you think you can take an old man 'cause you're young, why don't you give it a try? Jake: He just runs, but little does he know he's about to be killed by a roller coaster, which is again wild. A wild bit of cinema. Pete: Well, yeah, these guys are running through this Coney Island amusement park, firing their guns at each other, not really caring too much. Jake: Why aim a knife at Sam Elliott if you have a gun on you? Pete: I didn't think of that. That's a great point. Jake: Yeah. Pete: Why? Yeah. There's a lot of a lot of whys in this movie. There is a why how I mean we'll get to this this in just a second. So they chase through the amusement park, firing guns at each other, not really caring if they're gonna hit bystanders or not. And then they sort of make their way towards this roller coaster area and Richie Marks, he grabs the criminal and he pushes him onto the roller coaster ride and the roller coaster starts taking off and these these guys are fighting while this cab is going up and up, up towards the top of this roller coaster. Jake: It's it's really just Pete: Terrible. Jake: it's taking its time for them to run through this this amusement park. It's a long chase. Finally the cops show up, he fires a couple of shots at these police cars, then he runs. Where's he gonna go? He gets an on a on a roller coaster? Like that's gonna like dude, it's on a track. It's on it's on it's on rails. You're not gonna be able to escape at that. Pete: Right. Jake: They know that you're coming back. Pete: Yeah. But both of them sort of bundle onto this car, don't they, on the roller coaster, and it goes up, up, up, up, up, up to the top of the the first dive. And while it's going up, the criminal guy sort of picks up like a bolt or something that he finds and he tries to hurl it at Richie Marks' head. And Richie Marks just dodges out of the way and he grabs behind this car that's going up this track on the roller coaster ride and pulls off a panel. And th it's a kind of an electrical panel and it we see sparks fly off and then he falls off of the the track and he comes to rest on the ground. But the roller coaster ride is still going up and the car is still going up this incline with the criminal on it. He thinks he's he's got rid of the cop. Marx has ripped the electronics panel out and rather than have any fail safe system on this roller coaster car with the brakes, it just goes crazy downhill. And then launches off the top of the next hill. Jake: Yeah. Whatever whatever Richie pulled off the back of that thing was critical to the operation of this roller coaster because it yeah, it just flies off the tracks and it it just flattens this criminal. Yeah, he just falls to his doom. And then you know, we get the cops showing up and and Richie goes up to the the the d desiccated roller coaster cart and just shakes his head and goes Damn, what a shame, or something like that, and just walks off into the night. So there we go. Second action beat of the movie, Death by Roller Coaster. Proceed. Pete: It was it was very much like they had to put in another action scene here when they were writing this, they Right, we need another action scene. What can we have here? hey, fishing, then he gets chased through the amusement park and then roller coaster. Great. Jake: Yeah, this reminds me of that scene in true romance, the writers are sitting around and they're like, How should we kill this guy? And this guy's girlfriend just looks at the TV and goes, Roller Coaster. Pete: Yeah that's right. Yeah, yeah. True right. Jake: Now we cut back to the assistant DA Susan's apartment and it's morning time and Peter Weller has spent the entire night there. no, Peter Weller, you gotta tell your fiance. Pete: Yeah, well what what has he told his fiancee? He's t he's lied to his fiancee. He's told Gail that he's going out to Boston for a couple of days on business. But not really. No, he's porking Susan in her apartment. Jake: Austin's code for butt stuff. Yeah. He's he's set up shop in Susan's apartment. And this little bit, I like, dude, I have not wanted to skip something so bad on this podcast. This little beat where they it's between Peter Weller and Susan, and there's basically like you're bent for more than this. You deserve you should be a a a public defender. You love it, you love everything about it. He's like, No, baby, it's killing me. It's killing me inside. Can't you see? I wanna work for Wall Street, I wanna be somebody. It's just no one cares about this character in this in this

element. He's a bad guy. He's he's cheating on his fiance with this hot little assistant DA. Just w what's the point of all this? It just seems like it's duct taped to the side of this movie. I didn't need it. She's Pete: She's really aggressive. Jake: a real battle axe, isn't she? We get another courtroom scene. This heats up just a little bit for me. I think this this little bit is saved by virtue of the fact that there's a mobster on the stand. And I love his performance in this. It's like, d isn't it true that Detective O'Leary bought a Porsche from you? And he's like, Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Who knows? And she's like, Did you give him a receipt? Nah, he paid cash. We have receipts, but they we recently moved. They got lost in the shuffle. dear God, we're not even trying, are we? Pete: Yeah, it's a great little Jake: They call Michael Jones to the stand and this he's an extremely likable character, this Michael Jones. If I was on the jury and I heard this guy talking, I'm I'm siding with him. A gentle person. Pete: Have you ever had to do d jury duty, Jake? Jake: No, I've had to go and I I had to go to jury selection and they took one look at me and were like, We're not putting this guy in a fucking jury with an open bag of potato chips, my guts hanging out. Pete: Socks with sandals. Yeah, no, no good. Yeah. Go back home. I've I've done jury duty in the UK and what a what an experience it was, Jake. We had a case where I think we did two cases. But one of the cases we did was a guy who had smashed up the car of his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend. So they'd broken up, he'd got mad, and then he'd come and smashed up the car. outside her apartment. He was just a thug. He was he was on the stand and the prosecutor was asking him questions about where da da da da and he he was just looking at his mum. His mum was in the gallery and so whenever he had a question which he didn't kind of know what to say, he'd look at his mum and his mum would tell him to say something. He was about eighteen, nineteen years old, maybe twenty, young guy. Yeah. But you can just say he he didn't have a clue, didn't really look very good. And then the star witness came, Jake, and it was the girlfriend. The ex girlfriend. And she just was amazing. She was just like, yeah, yeah, he did this and he did that and I saw him do this and yeah, he he is a horrible person. Da da da da da da. And I and she was just absolutely she just laid it all down, exactly what he did, what he was like within like two minutes. And everyone on that jury would just kind of looked at each other. Right, yeah. Okay. So we went we went to kind of deliberate in the room after the after the arguments had been given. Yeah. literally everybody in there was like, Yeah, he's guilty as fucking sin, isn't he? Everyone was like, Yep Jake: no shot. No shot, mama's boy. Not not worried. Pete: Yeah. But then aga you know, I felt sorry really for the guy in the end because he had looked like he'd been in trouble before, you know, had a troubled life. Maybe his dad wasn't around as well. His dad wasn't in court for for sure, as far as I could see. But, you know, just sending him down, putting him in the prison system, is that actually gonna do him any good? Really? Is that gonna reverse his ways? And I don't think so, right? Jake: For a crime of passion just for breaking up some dude's car. He was probably play playing too much Street Fighter Two Turbo and just thought that's what you do. Pete: Is that justice, Jake? Jake: This is the part in the courtroom here where we get a tip that there's a little bit more evidence up in the evidence locker at this NYPD precinct. And so after this little bait beat in the courtroom, Peter Weller will secure a court order to go and investigate and check out this evidence from this shooting that's in the evidence locker. And God, he's just being met with unhelpful people as he walks into this precinct. Can you believe this shit? Did you catch this older cop who's sitting there and he's like, Yeah, I got a court order and the cop just lets him have it. Pete: Yeah. Yeah, they're not happy with him. They they are aware that Dalton is on the side, obviously the defender for Michael, Michael James. So they are not happy with him sort of wandering around the police department, getting any evidence out of the locker, all of this sort of stuff. No good. Jake: Right. So he'll go up, he'll he'll go to this guy, he'll be like, I've got a court order to go check out the evidence. Where's the evidence rocker? And the guy behind the counter's like, It's up there, you son of a bitch. doesn't give him any quarter, just fucking reams him out. And he's like, Beater Willow's like, Cool, all right. So he goes up to the evidence locker and there's Richie April again. David Proville is in there and he gets tipped off from the guy downstairs. He's like, Hey, Dalton's coming up to look at the evidence. So he goes over, he puts a key in the in the lock on the evidence locker and then breaks it with a pair of aviation pliers or or lineman pliers. Pete: And Dalton's like, Yeah, sure. He can see the writing on the wall here, what's happened. They don't want him to get into this evidence locker. And he Yeah, you're the best cops that money can buy. So yeah, they there's this tension between the city cops and and Dalton, the public defender, of course. but this is also where we get Gail as well, who comes into the courthouse while he's while he is defending the case of Michael Jones. And she comes into the courthouse and Gail says to Look, I've got to tell you something really important. I'm pregnant. Jake: Yeah, yeah. This is the whole scene. So th our protagonist who's been sleeping with his ex girlfriend the entire picture and like the the chickens are coming home to roost, Pete, because Gail comes in and she's like, I got great news, sweetheart. I'm pregnant. I threw up this morning, but I'm pregnant. He's like No But dude, I gotta be

honest, if that was me in this situation, that's a wrap for the day. I'm not going and finish Sorry, Mike. Mike, we're gonna plea bargain this. I got some shit I gotta deal with. But no, he just compartmentalizes and he makes it down to the precinct to do his investigation. Just what a legend. This guy's got ice water in his veins. Pete: Yes, he has. Yeah, it's a it's a bit of a shame because obviously Dalton was looking to exit the relationship and now he finds out that his partner is in fact pregnant. So Jake: He's locked in for eighteen. Pete: Yes, yes he is. So Dalton decides he needs to get into that knocker. He needs to retrieve a tape that's in there. The tape in fact that Michael Jones taped of the O'Leary cop shooting him and what he says before the the shots fly. Jake: So after being refused the the the evidence at first from Richie April, Dalton decides to come back in the middle of the night while everyone's out and try to get the the tape for himself. So he breaks into the he climbs up like the drain pipe and gets into the evidence locker with a set of bolt cutters. Opens up this locker, starts looking in just as he's apprehended by the bad guy cops. Pete: Yes, they busted him. They busted him breaking into the into the police station. They busted him breaking into the locker with some bolt cutters. so this guy is banged to right. So they put him in a room and they start to interrogate him. Little bit of o over eager interrogation, isn't it? They they start to rough him up a little bit really in this room. And they ask him, What is it you're looking for? What is it you're after in that locker? What is it that's so important? And not one of them has bothered to, check out the tape that's in the tape recorder, in the recording device that's in the locker. Not not one of them has looked into that at all, these corrupt cops. Jake: Shows you what their priorities are, right? No one has checked out the tape, but someone did line the walls with plastic because we know we're gonna execute this guy in there. At least they're doing some due diligence on their going zone. Pete: Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it looks like this may be the end for for poor Dalton because they want to find out what he what he needs. But Dalton's like storewalk. He's like, nope, I'm not gonna tell you, not gonna tell you anything. And they start to rough him up a little bit. And it's only when the gun comes out and is pressed to his forehead, that he then gives up gives up the the the reason. Yeah. Jake: And he he sings like a canary. He's just like, Yeah, there's a tape. There's a tape of Michael Jones. They recorded everything. Everything's on the tape. Just do the tape. And the cop is like, nicely done. We got the tape. He lights it on fire and he goes, Hey, kill this guy, will ya? While we while I go and do other things. Isn't that right? he's just like, Yeah, kill this guy. And then he fucks off. He just walks out the room. He meets Sam Elliott on the stairs. Sam Elliott's where the fuck is Dalton? And he's like, he's waiting for his lawyer. Just a good little bit. And he turns around and flips him off. But I like this movie. This is where the movie really takes off for me. There's a lot of a lot of action beats happen. It's just a whirlwind to the end of this picture. Detective Mullet picks up the payphone, he puts a quarter in, he dials another, and he goes, Hey baby, just letting you know. Daddy's coming home soon, hangs up the phone and pulls the fire alarm. Who is he calling? We've never seen anyone else him him talking to anybody else. Just a little bit of bit you think he ad libbed that? You think he was like, Would I just pull the fire alarm or maybe I would call my my girl? I think I'll Pete: Well if I remember rightly, I don't think he actually makes a call. I think he just pretends that he's making a call just so he can hang out next to the fire alarm, which is the signal for them to shoot Dalton in the head upstairs. If I'm correct remember. Jake: Okay, that's that makes more sense. Pete, what a mastermind criminal you are. Pete: I did watch it. Jake: You you're you've got you've got the the the the the ins and outs of this criminal mind. My goodness. yeah. Pete: Yes. Criminal intent without none of the proceeds, unfortunately, Jake. Jake: Get you a bag of chemicals. But Dawn, Jesus Christ. Richie goes barreling up the stairs, kicks the door open to the room, and he sees that his longtime buddy is being hog tied to a chair and about to be executed by a pistol in this room full of plastic, and Richie just lets the bullets fly. He takes out Richie April, he takes out the other dumpy cop. He sets Peter Weller free and got the look on his face when he's looking at Peter Weller, too. This this is Sam Elliott speed. You're reading everything on this guy's face. You're like, man, I'm a cop. my buddy, he's a lawyer. He's a bit soft, but God, he just went through hell since he was apprehended in this room. poor guy. Peter Weller gets up, he's like, I gotta go to court. And he runs out of the building. Pete: Yeah. and this is where the movie just ramps up, doesn't it, Jake? It goes from like, you know, five miles an hour to like two hundred miles an hour at this point. Jake: Yeah. The absurdity just goes off the charts. Pete: It's the next day and Dalton has had a a recess from the judge from the day before, so he's he's on a schedule. He's gotta get back to court and he runs downstairs and he jumps in a cab with one of the craziest cab drivers in movies, Jake. Jake: Hey, I'm an American, I took the test. Pete: I studied this. Jake: I know those cops cannot take you because you have your rights. I know your rights. I am American. I took the test. And he just floors it. So the cops are chasing after this cab, and this cab driver is just immediately like, Hey, I recognized you from T V. You're in this big high profile case at the courthouse. I'm gonna get you there, pal, regardless of who's behind us. I'm

not gonna stop for all these cops. We're going there, buddy. Yeah. Pete: And then they cut the shit out of this last bit of the scene as well. Did you notice? What happens is they turn up a Jake: This is just the first offense that they cut the shit out of. my God. There's a lot of really extreme edits in this movie. Pete: There are, yeah. They they had to get the runtime down from two and a half hours or something, whatever it was. but you're right. there's some there's some really strange decisions on the editing of this movie. But this is one of them. So the they this crazy crazy cab driver turns up on the street about hundred hundred yards away from the courthouse, on the steps of the courthouse. And there's a ring of looks like cop cars, well it is cop cars, maybe corrupt cop cars. surrounding the courthouse. So they're blocking Dalton from accessing the courthouse. So what happens next? There's a crane driver just there for some reason, because why not? And he he puts his hook of the crane through the cab, grabs the cab by the roof, and then hauls the cab up and over the barricade of the police cars. He's helping them out, Jake. This isn't made clear in the movie at all. It looks like he's trying to kill them in the movie by swinging a hook through the fucking windscreen. But no, he's trying to help them out by getting them over the barricade of the police cars, dropping them on the other side, which is when the the the courthouse, the people in the courthouse, like the the judge and the all of her various assistants, they all come out down the steps of the courthouse, run across the road a little bit and come to where this crushed up taxi cab is with Dalton who staggers out of the cab and she goes the judge says to him, Look, what are you doing, Dalton? What the hell's going on? Dalton Jake: gets assisted by the crane operator. He lifts the car and puts it right in front of the courthouse, on the other side of the police blockade. Had this been twenty twenty six, the the operator of that crane would have been shot to death by the police. Pete: Absolutely he would. Sure. Jake: Expeditiously. Dalton gets out of the car and the judge is begowned and just standing there with the assistant DA, Susan, and the bailiff from the court, some dumpy lady who's just standing there next to the judge. Dalton gets out of the car and says, I have new evidence. Remember that tape that was on fire just a few moments ago? Well, I have it. And this is gonna crack the case wide open. Judge says, This better be good. Turns around, walks into the courthouse, all the police are there, weapons drawn. Pete: Not just yet, no. Not just yet. So she th they're standing like what, fifty fifty yards away from the steps of the courthouse. The police surround the cab. They draw their guns, and as soon as Dortmund has stepped out, the all of them draw their guns, all twenty or five of them, or however many around this this this cab, and they all are threatening Dalton by you

know, with getting shot, and they say, We're gonna arrest you, we've got to arrest this guy, and the judge turns up and goes, No, she says While we're in the step on the steps of the courthouse, I am the law. On the streets that's your thing. Where are they, Jake? Where are they standing? Jake: It looks like they're standing in the street, Pete. Pete: They're they are standing on the streets. They're fifty yards from the steps of the courthouse. They're standing in the road and and she's saying, The road is your domain, please. You know, y you can do anything you like. Jake: See the steps of the courthouse were in my jurisdiction. Pete: Yeah. And the police are like, yeah, you're you're right. You are the law around here. You are dread. Jake: But in just a wild decision from the filmmakers here, the judge walks into the courthouse. Again, everybody still has their guns drawn down on Peter Weller. The bailiff reaches into her holster, pulls the gun out, and presses it to the ear of one of the cops. Are we serious? And the bailiff says, Go ahead, make my day. Pete: Todo. Jake: And I'm dead on the sofa. Pete: Yeah. Jake: Cut to me a skeleton wearing my clothes. Pete: What a terrible line. Come on. Think of something think of something on your own here, guys. Don't take a line from Dirty Harry. Please. But Jake: This reeks to me. This line and the line, Fucking A man, I'm from New York City, when when Peter Weller is asked if he can handle a a a pistol, I feel like these are the lines that were added to make it attempted to to make it more comedic. Pete: yeah. Jake: it just reeks of that. Pete: But unfortunately, in the courthouse, Jake, the judge puts a kibosh on the new evidence. She doesn't like the look of this tape, Jake. Do you can you explain to me her reasoning behind this this decision? Jake: get it. Why does that boggle the mind? That seems like a perfectly suitable piece of evidence. Pete: Dude, her explanation here is just legal mumbo jumbo. She goes, No, we're not gonna have that as evidence because and she comes out with just this this load of absolute horseshit. So we get the closing arguments, don't we, instead? And we get Dalton delivering really quite a powerful closing argument for for the acquittal of of Mr Jones. Jake: Pulled out his gun before he pulled out a badge. Yeah, it's a it's a nice little closing argument. It's a great performance from Peter Weller. It's a good little courtroom scene. I'm there for it. Pete: Well, it's a believable. Beli again, he's a believable actor in this in this movie. And he does. He takes that little scene by the scruff of its neck, I think, and rings it out. I quite like it. So yeah, we get the acquittal. the judge decides that or the jury, I should say, decides that they have not got the evidence to prosecute Mr. Jones, so he will be acquitted of the murder of O'Leary, the policeman. Jake: During the acquittal, we get another little piece of a note being passed to Peter Weller in class. He opens it up. We get a not guilty verdict, everything is great, everything is peas and carrots, he comes strutting out of the courthouse. By the way, all the cops that were there to arrest him fucking gone now. He's met by Sam Elliott, and Sam Elliott's got his big old pistola, the Porsche that was in the garage of Detective O'Leary. And he's holding up the gun in the middle of the street with the car keys and he's like, Do you wanna shoot or do you wanna drive? The end of this movie is insane, Pete. Take it away, sir. Pete: Yeah, this is where this movie turns up to eleven and what does he decide? He d he decides to drive, doesn't he, Dalton? So Dalton's driving the Porsche while Sam Elliott is doing the shooting. Is that what they decide it is? Jake: Presumably. Pete: It's Huggy Bear and Mallet. They are escaping by plane. Apparently they've been seen at LaGuardia Airport. And so they take the Porsche, they hightail it over to the airport, and luckily just in time to see this small private plane taxiing down the runway and and about to take off Jake. Jake: That's right. Yeah. And it'll be like with tail as old as time. That Porsche is going to get out of the runway at LaGuardia and it's going to try to chase down this jet plane. Are you insane? Now, Porsches are they're they're high performance machines, sure, but they're not going to match a a Pratt and Whitney engine, dude. What's the takeoff speed of a jet like that? It's gotta be hundreds of miles an hour. Pete: Maybe hundred and eighty, maybe a takeoff speed, something like that. So if Porsche could catch up, I'm pretty sure a Porsche could you know, yeah, driving at top speed can catch up. But whether you could actually make the transition from a moving Porsche at hundred and eighty miles an hour to the undercarriage of a plane, that I'm not sure about, G. Jake: Yeah, okay. So that's what's basically gonna happen. They're gonna pull the Porsche up to the underbelly of this plane as it's taking off. Like we're we're talking nose off the ground. He gets onto this landing gear, the plane takes off, and there is just an awful, awful shot of Sam Elliott sitting on this landing gear with the city skyline of New York in front of him. It looks terrible. Capital T terrible, Pete. Pete: Yeah. It's it's not great, is it? but he he looks skywars that shit, doesn't he? Like on Hoff, man, he gets the fucking taking down the atat. He he gets himself a grenade and he pops it into the the the landing gear, where the landing gear comes out of the plane and then hops off the plane, jumps off into the river. Is it the Hudson? Jake: Yeah, either the East River or Hudson, I don't know which it is. But do you you catch the the two the twin towers in this shot as well? Pete: I didn't know. Jake: This doesn't play well to a modern audience. It's the nose gear of this plane pointed directly at the Twin Towers. Pete: dear. Jake: my god. But yeah, so he'll throw the grenade that presumably he kept in his pocket from

the raid on Wonderland up through the landing gear like it's an ATAT in Star Wars. So yeah, the the plane is coming in for an emergency landing because it can't get the nose gear up because fucking Sam Elliott's sitting on it. And as it's coming into on its approach, it's over the river and Sam Elliott just drops into the river. He would skip on the surface of that river like a rock. It'd just be Sammy like pip pip pip pip. He'd be hitting the bank of the river for sure, but no, he just splashes down. The airplane lands, we get an interior shot of Huggy Bear and Mullet, hey, we're back on on land. And then boom, the grenade goes off. What is the timer on this grenade? Pete: What is the timer? And also what is the what is the level of explosive of this grenade as well, Jay? This is a hand grenade, remember? This isn't like twenty sticks of dynamite. This is just one hand grenade going off. Jake: Yeah, this thing goes off like it's a like it's a like it's two pounds of C four. Plane takes off, Sam Elliott's on the landing gear, Sam Elliott shoots the engine, the a the plane almost crashes into the Twin Towers. It then banks and comes back in for an emergency landing. Sam Elliott throws grenade into the belly of the plane, drops into the river, plane lands, plane explodes, and somehow Peter Weller just pulled the Porsche off to the side. Like he was still like this, he was still slowing down. From getting Sam Elliott onto the plane. Just some wild, wild decisions in filmmaking. Peter Weller turns to Sam Elliott and goes, I love you. And Sam Elliott goes, no. Pete: Yeah. Work. That would work in this movie. Jake: Okay, so we've tied up the loose end, we've tied up the big bad. The the bad cop and the bad guy have blown up in an airplane, courtesy of Sam Elliott and Dalton, but we still have to resolve the main character. He's got a pregnant wife, he's got a mistress. How are we how is he gonna get out of this bucket of syrup? We cut to Thanksgiving dinner, and we know that it's Thanksgiving because there are a bunch of leaves on the table. There's a turkey, there are glasses of wine, there's the whole family together. If if the action beats of the movie were just thrown at you at a hundred miles an hour, this last bit of dialogue does exactly the same. So, Pete, you r you remember this little bit of the movie? Pete: So they're at this big old dinner, at this huge dinner table, groaning under the weight of all this food and this turkey. And this is the point where Gail, in front of her parents at Thanksgiving dinner, decides to tell everyone that she is no longer pregnant, that she had a miscarriage, Jake. Isn't that right? Jake: So she basically says, I was never pregnant to begin with. I just didn't want to lose you. So it wasn't a miscarriage that she took a pregnancy test. It was actually negative, but she told him that she was pregnant anyway. Peter Weller stands up at hearing this information, says, I have an announcement to make too, and he gets a little shit in and grin on his face, which is just code for he's breaking up with this chick and he's he's free and free and easy. Pete: He does that at Thanksgiving dinner though in front of the family? Come on. Come on, Peter Weller. What are you doing here? You should be doing that by text message after the after you've eaten your fill. Jake: Yeah. You finish up that turkey and gravy, you sop it up, finish a glass of wine, then stand up and say you're b you're leaving the family. Pete: No, then you go upstairs, you take a massive dump in their toilet, and while you're having your dump, you text the fiance, We are breaking up and then you leave your turd floating in their upstairs toilet on their en suite, and you just wander out of the house, Jake. Jake: That's the play. Ladies and gentlemen out there, go to Pete for all of your dating advice. He he will lead you down the right path. And that's Shakedown from the year nineteen eighty eight. Pete, what'd you think of this flick? Pete: Yeah. Well what an entertaining movie this is. A Chees, Americana, Blue Jean Cop, we've got Sam Elliott, we've got Peter Weller, both doing very well in the acting department in this movie. We've got a lot of action, we've got chases, we've got guns, we've got women, we've got sex, we've got gangsters, we've got planes, we've got car chases, we've got courtroom scenes. This movie ticks every single box, apart from perhaps comedy. Maybe that's the only thing it's it's missing. But apart from that, it ticks every single box, Jake. It's a good movie. it's not a great movie, it's not one perhaps that I would be putting on every year, but it's an entertaining ride and why not? Is what I would say. Jake: Yeah. For me, I think that this is this is just cinema gold for me. I think it's got just the right blend of legitimately good bits, legitimately insane bits, and the last five minutes of the movie is completely unforgettable. I was telling both you and Brandon that I I've not been able to stop thinking about the last five minutes of this movie for like a week now. It is so wild, so insane. Just that whole bit of business with Sam Elliott on the nose gear of that jet, and it's it's just it's That horrible I don't know what you call that when you that visual effect where you basically just cut out Pete: The Jake: you you you film the New York City skyline and then you cut out the solenoid around the plane and the landing gear, and then you just superimpose the plane and the landing gear over the New York City skyline. It looks terrible. It looks like something out of that old movie Metropolis from the twenties. It is that bad. And just have that whole thing just a whirlwind of action, landing gear, grenade, Sam Elliott in the river, plane explodes, everybody's happy. Cut to Thanksgiving dinner. It's just like, whoa, I'm getting a whiplash from the end of this thing. Pete: Yeah, you're right. Yeah, they really Yeah, it's it's as you said before, it's strange editing choices for this movie. Like in the the first half of the movie it seems fairly slow. There's a couple of scenes perhaps they don't need, but then the the last ten minutes it's just everything crunched up like a concertina. Jake: Yeah, absolutely. man. But is this one that you would recommend, Pete? Pete: I would, yeah. It's an entertaining eighties movie. If you're into action movies, buddy cop movies, courtroom drama movies, anything like that, this is worth a watch for you. Jake: Yeah, I would recommend this. I would recommend this to anybody who loves lethal weapon or courtroom dramas. And that's been Shakedown from the year nineteen eighty eight, directed by James Glinkenhaus, starring Peter Weller, Sam Elliott, and Richard Brooks. Join us next week as we go over Master and Commander with our buddy Prince. We're bringing back the movie talk round table next week, Pete. That's some exciting stuff. yeah. And as always, I'm Jake. Pete: Pete. Jake: And this is Jake and Pete's movie talk. We will see you next week with Master and Commander. Have a good one.