Stick ** (1985, Burt Reynolds, Candice Bergen, George Segal, Charles Durning) – Classic Movie Review 7568

An Elmore Leonard novel about an ex-convict sucked into Florida’s drugs underworld is patchily transferred to the screen as a rickety crime action thriller vehicle for the always likeable Burt Reynolds, both as actor and director.

Reynolds plays Ernest ‘Stick’ Stickley, who gets out of jail prison and is involved with drug-running, a rich investor, collecting a debt, his daughter, a new flame, and drug dealer hoods Chucky (Charles Durning) and Nestor (Castulo Guerra).

The story is sometimes hard to swallow and the characters are sometimes hard to take – Charles Durning’s blond-haired bad guy Chucky and stuntman Dar Robinson as the albino hit-man Moke, in particular. Candice Bergen and George Segal are lost and wasted as Kyle and Barry. But sparks fly in the action scenes at the start and finish of the movie.

Also in the cast are José Pérez, Richard Lawson, Alex Rocco, Dar Robinson, David Reynoso, Tricia Leigh Fisher and Sachi Parker.

Elmore Leonard and Joseph C Stinson adapt the novel. Joseph C Stinson also adapted Blake Edwards’s story and screenplay for City Heat.

Stick was made in October 1983 but its release was held up for re-shoots. However, it flopped. Costing $22,000,000, it grossed only $8,489,000 at the US box office. And, sadly and unexpectedly, Reynolds’s career was suddenly on a downward curve.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7568

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