Review: Against All Odds

Jeff Bridges plays a footballer named Terry who is getting on in years and plagued by injuries. He’s pissed when he ends up cut from the team, despite being there a long time and always putting in 110%. Now strapped for cash until he can find a spot on another team, he gets a job offer from an old friend, Jake (James Woods). Jake is a nightclub owner and bookie whose girlfriend Jessie (Rachel Ward) stabbed him during one of their many fights and ran off on him, taking $50,000 of Jake’s money with her. She did leave the dog, though, which is nice of her. Jake loves her, though, and needs her back. Terry then goes to visit his team owner (played by Jane Greer) and her business partner (Richard Widmark) to see if she can put him back on the team. When Greer finds out about Jake’s offer, she makes Terry a counter-offer: See, Jessie is Greer’s estranged daughter, and she wants her found too…so she can get her the hell away from the vile Jake. She won’t reinstate Terry, but she is willing to pay him more than Jake is offering. She suggests he look down in Mexico, though Terry’s training coach (Alex Karras) suggests he stay the hell out of it, while he sees if he can get Terry a coaching gig. Terry ignores this advice and heads to Mexico where he indeed comes across the runaway rich girl. Knowing that Terry has been sent either by Jake or her mother, she’s reluctant to have anything to do with him. However, he’s hot, she’s hot, and you know how these things go. They become lovers, enjoying some fun in the sun. And then Karras turns up out of the blue and that’s when things get truly messy. Saul Rubinek plays the sleazy team lawyer, Swoosie Kurtz plays Rubinek’s lonely secretary who has the hots for Terry, Dorian Harewood plays Jake’s lackey, and Bill McKinney appears briefly as an assistant coach.

 

This 1984 loose Taylor Hackford (“Proof of Life”, “Ray”) remake of the noir flick “Out of the Past” is one of those frustrating films that inches so very close to being a good film…but never quite gets there. There’s a lot to like here, but small issues add up and prevent it from making the grade. Pacing, for instance is a problem. Building the relationship between Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward is important and the island locales are lovely, but Hackford and screenwriter Eric Hughes (Hackford’s “White Nights”) spend too much time with them at the beach, at the expense of pace and tension. Ward, by the way, doesn’t even enter the film until about 30 minutes have passed, which doesn’t help. Also, as much as I love the Grammy-winning (and Oscar-nominated) Phil Collins title song, I don’t think it actually suits the story at all, nor does the very 80s pop score by Michel Colombier (“Purple Rain”, “Posse”) and Larry Carlton (a well-known rock guitarist who at one point was in Steely Dan) fit in at all. I’ve heard Hackford originally wanted Dire Straits front-man Mark Knopfler to do the score, and his more blues-rock sensibilities would’ve suited this story much more than the Jan Hammer (“Miami Vice”) knockoff we ultimately get (not to mention that the soundtrack also has numbers by Stevie Nicks, Peter Gabriel, Big Country, and Mike Rutherford. Very, very 80s). Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad score at all, it’s just that it’s one that doesn’t really belong here. Combined with the ricockulous and unnecessary sports car chase between Jeff Bridges and James Woods, you have something that ill-fittingly plays like a Tony Scott (“Top Gun”, “Revenge”) flick at times. And don’t even get me started by the on-screen musical performance by some entity known as Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Yeah, I was just listening to their latest jam the other day, lemme tell you. No seriously, who the hell are they? The best elements of the music score incorporate the Collins song, much as I think the song is too epic to fit this particular story. Yes, Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward are a good match, but their love story didn’t seem epic enough to warrant such an epic love song. But it’s still a great song, so it makes sense that the best moments in the score feature the familiar strains of that song. So those are the small problems I had with the film, that ultimately added up to just enough of a problem to drag the film down from what it could’ve been. Pretty much everything else works just fine.

 

I’m not entirely sure I bought Jeff Bridges as a football player, but I had zero issues once he turned amateur skip tracer/detective. He’s a solid and relatable presence on screen. I must say, though, that every other actor in the film steals the film from him, right down to the intimidating and freaking scary Bill McKinney in a bit role as a football coach. Aussie resident Rachel Ward and character actress Swoosie Kurtz do some of their career-best work here. Ward was born for noir, something Carl Reiner obviously realised when casting her in the underrated spoof “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid”. It’s weird given that noir is kind of an American genre (albeit with a French name) and Ward is an English-born Aussie resident, but she has that perfect duality for noir where she could play a femme fatale or merely ‘damaged goods’ waiting to be rescued by the hero. It’s a credit to her that you spend a lot of the film unsure just which of these things she may turn out to be. Swoosie Kurtz really does have the showiest character part here and plays it to the hilt. You’ll remember her long after the film is over, and the only shame is that she’s not in more of the film. She’s a hoot. Screen legend Richard Widmark doesn’t get much screen time, either, but he says a helluva lot with the most subtle of facial expressions. That’s kinda interesting when you consider the rather colourful, psychotic characters he started his career with, but Widmark was a most versatile character actor. Jane Greer is pretty good too, playing the mother of the character she played in the 1947 original. I also enjoyed the smaller contributions by Saul Rubinek and particularly Alex Karras, who steals the opening moments of the film. Hell, he even manages to steal a scene from Widmark, not an easy thing. You may remember him as the adoptive father on TV’s adorable “Webster”. Rubinek has obviously become typecast as sleazy lawyers and that’s no different here, but isn’t he great at it?

 

If you’ve seen the film, you’re probably realising that I’m saving the best for last here: James Woods. Woods doesn’t always get it right as an actor (I still don’t think he deserved an Oscar nom for “Ghosts of Mississippi” and he wasn’t quite right in the “Straw Dogs” remake, either), but when he’s on, he’s practically unbeatable. Here he’s in great James Woods form and perfectly cast as a pathetic weasel villain. Like Kurtz, you wish he was in more of the film, but when he’s around, everyone else is practically invisible. He’s so incredibly oily in this I was getting grease stains on my eyeballs. It’s interesting to see him in the same film as Richard Widmark when you consider that a lot of Woods’ bad guy performances are pretty similar to Widmark’s early work.

 

A terrific cast can’t quite overcome a sluggish pace and a somewhat jarring soundtrack, as this modern noir almost but not quite comes off. James Woods, Swoosie Kurtz, and Rachel Ward are outstanding, however, and the story has its moments too. It’s just shy of a recommendation.

 

Rating: C+