"SHAMUS" & "PHYSICAL EVIDENCE"......FAREWELL, BURT REYNOLDS......

Shamus (1973), Physical Evidence (1989)    We thought we'd stand out a little if we skipped over the most heavily mentioned Burt Reynolds milestones (Deliverance, Smokey And the Bandit, etc...)

          .........and instead, pick two random, long forgotten items out of his filmography......the kind of movies he'd roundly ridicule when he ruled the late night talkshows with winking, self-depreciating appearances.......(no one made fun of Burt better than Burt)

                  Whether he decided to make throwaway, disposable movie-star vehicles or put some extra effort into quality films, Reynolds enjoyed his stardom, he giggled and smirked his way through it......and for a long time, we loved him for it.

                    He happily joked his way in and out of movies that were lame jokes themselves..........and as all of us do when age overtakes us, he lived long enough to ponder all the roads not taken.

                   Reynolds became the perfect movie star for the glib, slick-surface, self-absorbed 1970's......and he rode his fame like a champion surfer skimming through the rapidly collapsing interior of a monstrous wave.

                   Until the wave finally enveloped him and sent him flying off into the foam......

                   "Shamus" arrived at the very height of his star power, coming only a few months after his critically acclaimed role in 'Deliverance'.......a skimpy little private-eye knockoff barely held together with his now trademarked, sarcastic charm.

                    The movie's a lumpy mixed bag of stuff, cobbled together with up-to-date vicious violence, Reynolds' easy-going snarky persona and chunks of scenes that pay tribute to the classic Bogart-Bacall "The Big Sleep".   (There's a clumsy homage to that film's famous bookstore seduction sequence.....but in 1973, it's crudely updated with Reynolds eyeing the shopgirl's impressive cleavage and smirking "You're a healthy devil...")

                    Nothing in the film makes any sense, from the convoluted plot to Reynolds' character, who veers from jaunty wisecracker to an enraged thug who prefers strangulation to elicit clues from shady characters.

                     Unfortunately, "Shamus" offered a sneak preview of the the bulk of Reynold's career.....negligible, worthless little movies, designed to make you forget them before you'd even made it halfway up the theater aisle.

                     By 1989, he'd toiled in a number of such films,  a rocky run of box-office disappointments ("City Heat", "Stick", "Heat", "Malone", "Switching Channels").....and the misbegotten "Physical Evidence" didn't do him any favors either.

                     Conceived as a sort of a sequel to the Glenn Close-Jeff Bridges courtroom thriller "Jagged Edge", this was one of those movies that looked like everyone involved gave up before the cameras rolled.  Except for Reynolds, who must seen a chance to create a decidedly unlovable character, with no interest in begging for audience sympathy.

                      Playing a violence-prone cop who's framed on a murder charge, the actor turned in some worthy, serious work here........depicting a miserably unhappy man engulfed in simmering, sometimes explosive rage, he gave a performance deserving of a way better movie than this one.

                     The film, a badly botched thriller with some last minute pretense of romantic suspense, doesn't even come close to matching him.

                     The movie might have quietly ended up as just a modest, mediocre effort.......except that Theresa Russell's painful, amateur night performance as Reynolds' public defender lifted the film into the realm of Razzie Award material. She's that bad........making Ali McGraw look like Dame Helen Mirren.......reciting her lines as if she'd learned them phonetically.

                     We will say this much for "Physical Evidence" (the last movie directed by novelist Michael Crichton)......before the plodding sludge of the movie itself commences, it opens with a great sick-joke sequence in which a hapless, suicidal young guy encounters the body of a murder victim on a bridge.  It's like one of those macabre, goofy sequences that Hitchcock used to dream up at random but could never find a film to fit them in.........

                      And we'll say this for Burt Reynolds........no matter how uneven the films, he loved acting, loved practicing his craft and never stopped working at it........(we'll dearly miss the contribution he would have made to Tarantino's upcoming "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood").

                     He lived with his choices, some of them detrimental to his career, and accumulated enough experienced wisdom to lament his missed opportunities and lost loves.

                      But he had a hell of a productive, creative life and had a fine time living it........and millions of movie-goers (us included) had a fine time watching him.  For these two lost movies, 2 stars each (**)......for Burt Reynolds, 5 stars (*****)