Sunset **** (1988, Bruce Willis, James Garner, Malcolm McDowell) – Classic Movie Review 6538

Writer-director Blake Edwards teasingly says at the end of his fanciful 1988 comedy crime, mystery thriller movie: ‘And this is how it really happened. Give or take a lie or two.’

The story starts with the wicked studio boss Alfie Alperin (Malcolm McDowell) persuading veteran Western star Tom Mix (Bruce Willis) to make a silent movie about legendary lawman Wyatt Earp, with the real Earp (James Garner) as adviser, in 1929 Hollywood. There is a murder at that year’s Academy Awards and there ensues a splendid, labyrinthine Raymond Chandler-style thriller with lots of entertaining suspects, as Mix and Earp try to find the killer.

It flopped at the box office, costing $19 million and taking only $4,595,000 in the US, and Edwards won the Razzie Award for Worst Director (tied with Stewart Raffill for Mac and Me. But this under-valued film is one of Edwards’s best, not least thanks to Garner’s delightful performance, though Willis, McDowell and Hodge are excellent too. Rod Amateau provides the original story.

Also in the cast are Mariel Hemingway, Kathleen Quinlan, Jennifer Edwards, Patricia Hodge, Richard Bradford, M Emmet Walsh, Joe Dallesandro, Andreas Katsulas, Dann Florek, Bill Marcus, Michael C Gwynne and Dermot Mulroney.

It is shot in Technicolor by Anthony B Richmond, produced by Tony Adams and scored by Henry Mancini, with Oscar nominated Best Costume Design by Patricia Norris and production design by Rodger Maus.

One of Production Companies is Hudson Hawk Films Ltd, three years before another of Willis’s flops – Hudson Hawk.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6538

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