Word: crimeeds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...soul-searching among the Democrats in a New York City hotel last week was painful. They had gathered to discuss new approaches that the party should take toward one of America's most intractable social problems: the self- destructive cycle of unemployment, family disintegration and crime that has created what former Virginia Governor Charles Robb called a "permanent caste of destitute young men and women" in the nation's ghettos. One of the hosts was New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who was cast into the role of liberal standard-bearer by his stirring "shining city on a hill" speech...
...Hills Cop meets The French Connection flick is basically pretty straight forward. Gregory Hines, last seen dancing his tootsies off in the utterly offensive White Knights, and Billy "Mahvelous" Crystal play two yukster detectives from inner city Chicago who spend their spare moments between making drug busts and nailing crime rings by delivering Lettermanesque monologues to each other, presumably to pass the time. Utterly realistic cops these guys aren't, but remember, this isn't Hill Street Blues, and going to the movies means suspending one's disbelief. If you keep that caveat in mind, you'll enjoy this rollicking...
Anyway, it's apparent from the first frolicking scenes of Running that this film's Chicago--grim, gray and covered with dirty slush--is clearly not the same shining citadel we saw last week in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. There's crime on the streets of Chicago, unlike in picture-perfect Winnetka, and its up to Costanzo and his oh-so-cool sidekick Ray Hughes to whip the outlaws into shape...
...means not turning away from a dead body and going into the hall to vomit. It means going into a morgue and smelling a stench that makes you want to wash your hands for days." In short, unflinching realism, a misunderstood term. Says Elmore Leonard, the macabre ironist of crime and punishment: "If I were to ever write a private-eye story, and try to make it as realistic as the stories I do write, what would he do? Private detectives don't do that much. You gather information in divorce cases, or spend a lot of time finding bail...
...rigid belief that the world is rotten; to think otherwise is dangerous and unmanly. A corollary view is that the deck is stacked against the decent little guy or distressed damsel. The evidence often seems overwhelming. The shattering aftereffects of World War I, the rise of organized crime during Prohibition, the disillusionment of the Depression, all paralleled the development of the gallant equalizer. Today he is likely to deal with government corruption, financial fraud and environmental threats. "I don't consider my newest book, Barrier Island, as hard-boiled fiction," says John D. MacDonald. "It's about a land scam...