Best movie of this year hands down!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A cop, played by Jeff Bridges, shoots an unarmed assailant and is taken off the force. From there, his subsequent alcoholism contributes to the failure of his marriage, and he tries to fix things by going to AA. He meets a woman who leads him into a dark world of a drug dealer.This is one of those films I had always wondered about since I first remember seeing video tapes as a child. My father had a VHS copy that sat in the lounge under the VCR. On the cover was a hero with a gun, two women and a cool sports car, and the palm tree suggesting a Miami Vice-style environment.I remember seeing the video case so many times and making a note to watch it. Fast forward 25 years later and I've finally seen it. It was a really cool opening with a helicopter flight over city skyscrapers which, in a single shot, catches up to a police car moving along a freeway. The music is cool and pure 1980s action.The rest of the film, however, is a bit odd. There was just something not right about it. It turns out that the whole script dialog was improvised, which may explain a big, over-the-top swearing and shouting match that has to be seen to be believed.There's a cool but brief car chase and Jeff Bridges moves through the film with a casualness and ease that seems at odds with what's going on around him.Andy Garcia's character is strange, hard to understand. Sometimes he does weird things. But he's the villain and out to get Jeff Bridges.

Sorry, but I'm gonna have to give a Thumbs Down to "8 Million Ways To Die" despite so many big names involved in it. Hal Ashby's last film had a great beginning, jumbled up in the middle and it was out of salvation at the annoying and louder ending. This film is like sex without orgasm, doesn't have action, doesn't have much excitement, promises a lot and delivers too little and it disappoints a lot.The story involving a ex-cop (Jeff Bridges), his drinking problems and a investigation on the death of a prostitute (Alexandra Paul) is not news in film history and it was good until the middle when he mets Rosanna Arquette, from this point it's all downhill. It lacks interest, it goes in too many talks and almost no action, reaching an ending without any kind of climax. If the performances are quite good (specially Bridges and Andy Garcia playing the villain), the screenplay didn't helped this film at all with too many crime slang's, recycled clichés and obviously a love story that, at my view, shouldn't be there, the connections between characters comes out of the blue and it's too much easy to find out what happened. Worst of all, the villain has a huge lack of evilness, we're never able to see him doing something wrong or menacing.And to think that I was almost thinking that this could be something like "To Live and Die in L.A." (this is a perfect action film), since some obtuse viewers tended to compare with it. And the confusion is not only on screen, there's some controversies between the responsible of this. One of the writers of this film was Oliver Stone, whose original screenplay was changed drastically throughout the filming, and after seeing the final result he wanted his name out of the credits, which was impossible because the credits were already made up. Robert Towne changed the screenplay, and Ashby himself made countless changes and improvisations, and at the end this is what you get: a boring film with nothing much to say. And the last confusion of all, not trying to blame one of my favorite directors of all time, but the producers fired him after finishing the filming, and they kept the whole control over editing and things like that, the final word. It is difficult to say who ruined this movie but all I can say is that the actors cannot be blamed, and neither James Newton Howard's good musical score. The rest is up to you, if you want to see it or not. One of the most unnoticed (with justice) and disappointing films of the 80's. Ashby deserved a better ending in his filmography but we're talking about one of the most underrated directors of all time, who brought us preciosity's like "Harold and Maude" and "Being There" among others. 5/10

8 Million Ways to Die (1986) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Ashby's final theatrical film (which he was also fired from) is part thriller, part crime/drama, part love story but all the way mess. In the film Jeff Bridges plays Matt Scudder, a former cop who was let go from the force due to his drinking problem. He's asked by a prostitute for help but she soon ends up dead so Matt tries to find out who killed her. Everything points to a drug dealer (Andy Garcia) but Matt is able to get the hooker (Rosanna Arquette) that he's in love with in hopes to bringing down the entire racket. In many ways this thing plays out as a modern day noir but if you pick up any film book it's doubtful you're going to find a positive review. In fact, the three books I own each rate this as a BOMB, which I think is a bit unfair. Sure, this movie is a complete mess that at times appears to be three movies rolled into one but this thing is certainly never boring. I'm not sure when Ashby was actually fired but that might have something to do with the overall strange nature of this film. It starts off pretty much as a cop drama but then we get bits and pieces of a love story. We've also got the theme of alcoholism that is constantly being brought up as Bridges is fighting his demons. We then get all sorts of subplots including the drug dealer being in love with the hooker who just happens to have her own demons from her father leaving her as a child. There are all sorts of issues with the screenplay, which is a little surprising since Oliver Stone was one of the writers. I'm not sure how much of his original screenplay actually got filmed but in many ways this thing is a cocaine-warped nuthouse much like SCARFACE. It's funny that both films deal with cocaine and that both have one strange sequence after another. As bad as the screenplay is here you still can't take you eyes off the screen for several reasons. I thought the performances were rather good even if they're constantly being letdown by the material. Bridges was born to play a role like this and manages to turn in a very good performance as the former cop down on his luck and getting in over his head. Garcia is a lot of fun as well and he gets to shout and go off a few times like Pacino did in SCARFACE. We've got Arquette doing a fine job as the hooker with the heart of gold and Randy Brooks is fine as Bridges' friend. The actual mystery of who killed the original hooker is what the film goes on yet it's never really played out in the end as we switch gears to the second hooker. We even get an opening sequence where Bridges gets in trouble for shooting an unarmed man yet the man was beating an officer with a bat but no one ever mentions this as Bridges is getting nailed for it. All of the madness leads up to an even crazier ending with all our main people inside a warehouse full of cocaine, which Bridges keeps setting on fire, one kilo at a time. What falls just continues the crazy ways. I'm not sure if footage was cut out or if some sort of longer version could be put together but while watching the movie it's clear certainly things are either missing or perhaps everything was just thrown together poorly. Either way, this is a mess from start to finish but it's never boring.

Hal Ashby being sacked explains a lot; so does the disappearance of Oliver Stone. You can imagine how much tougher and seedier it would have been in Stone's hands. But Ashby, it would seem, tightened up and found his movie in the editing room, as this movie is not quite there. There is a curious lack of incidental music, except when it isn't needed, and what is there tends to foreshadow action. Scudder's initial descent into alcoholism is almost skipped over; you suspect that Stone or Ashby, given half the chance, would have added some detail to the descent. Instead of which Scudder's wife suddenly disappears, he's on his own. Perhaps you can explain this by saying 'blackout' but I think it's an error. The movie is realistically slow, treating the characters as real people, which is perhaps a mistake for the genre. There isn't much action until the very end, and the couple of bits during the film are followed by Scudder blacking out, so we don't get him dealing with the aftermath of these violent events. This is one of the few Block/Scudder novels i haven't read, so I can't comment on how similar to the book it is. My guess would be very, since Block tends to go in for very violent climaxes preceded by Scudder wondering if he'll hit the bottle again. Falls nicely into the Jeff Bridges B-movie crime genre which the Coens picked up on with The Big Lebowski.