Truly Dreadful Film

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

242: Best Seller. An 80s and I do mean very 80s movie about a cop who doubles as an author who has his life invaded by a professional hit man who wants him to write a memoir of his life. He worked with a corporation to take out the competition. It could have been an interestingly done movie. As I was watching the credits, I saw that this movie had been written by the great Larry Cohen. Alright now I'm on board with an interesting plot and a great script writer. Was I in for a treat? Nope. No I wasn't. I later found out that the director John Flynn had heavily rewritten the script. It felt like it. This movie did not feel like a Larry Cohen film. This felt like a generic action film from the 80s with a very genial performance from James Woods. He was fairly good in this movie. This is hokey and then it takes a meta moment where James Woods asks Brian Dennehy to make him sympathetic in the book and eventually he becomes a more sympathetic person in the movie itself. I imagine there are moments here that clearly came from Larry Cohen's mind. That is probably one of them. The other performances in the movie leave a lot to desired including Brian Dennehy. He was a dull main character and he paled in comparison to James Woods even when they start to go for those odd couple moments. Overall this is a movie that can be missed and no one would even know it. I give this movie a D.

This is like an old time cop movie, very well served. If this had been made in the 1940s, I could see it starring Humphrey Bogart as the cynical cop and Alan Ladd as the hit man trying to justify his life, with Adolph Menjou as the corrupt businessman. Minus the brief nudity, of course. That's about the only major change between movies then and now, at least movies of this ilk. It's a little corny, but it's tightly woven and well played. The story is standard, so it's the characters that have to carry it. Woods and Dennehy bring really rounded, deep characters to a shallow little cops and robbers story. I started to dislike Dennis for his disliking Cleve, then, when Cleve shows his true face, I disliked Cleve. Then, Cleve shows he is really capable of acts of kindness. And Dennis is capable of understanding and forgiveness. In the end, the bad guys get what's coming to them and the hero is revealed. What more could you want from a good old fashioned film noir, even with all that California sunshine and pastel wallpaper? The only thing that might have made this better is if it had been filmed in black and white.

What would have happened to Joseph Wambaugh, the LAPD cop and author of several well-known police novels, including "The New Centurions", if he burned himself out and had no more to write? Maybe he would have been approached by a burned out hit man for a corrupt organization. The hit man might have wanted his homicidal shenanigans revealed in a tell-all book that would have glorified him and led to the conviction of the organization's chief miscreant. The partnership would have been edgy, filled with conflict, and dangerous as hell.That's basically the plot of this film. Brian Dennehy is the burned out cop who is suspended temporarily from the force. This is a recurring ritual point in these films. Only in this case, instead of turning in his shield and gun, Dennehy suggests sick leave and it is happily given him. The steely hit man is James Woods, unflappable under any circumstances. The head of the mob is Paul Shenar, my supporting player in the art house masterpiece entitled "Raw Deal" with Ahnold Braunschweiger.The screenplay tries to make something of the Doppelganger theme but, to the extent that it's there at all, it's a shadow of its usual self. Dennehy and Woods have nothing in common except that their inspiration has flagged. Dennehy doesn't mind being a cop but he seems to have written himself out. Woods is bitter because he's just been fired and replaced and is looking for revenge. One doesn't represent the other's repressed desires, which is the touchstone of the Doppelganger business, as it was in, say, Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jeykll and Mister Hyde," or in MGM's "Forbidden Planet." But they tacked it on anyway, I suppose in an attempt to lend some weightier symbolism to what is basically a cop thriller and shoot-'em-up. There's a good deal of sneaking around in the dark, often with drawn pistols. There's a threatened wife and a kidnapped teen-aged daughter. Shenar is surrounded by well-groomed thugs, all of them killed by the team of Dennehy and Woods.There are some original touches. A cornered thug is threatened with a silenced pistol by Woods, who makes some wisecrack. "Why don't you skip the insults and just get it over with," says the goon, the kind who is usually faceless, and Woods immediately shoots him without another word. Just for a few seconds, the dialog allowed that henchman to emerge from the primordial stereotypical functionality that this role always demands. For a few seconds, he was more than just another bad guy to be killed in the complete absence of any distinction.That's about it. It must not have taken much effort to give the doomed gunman that line. (Maybe it was even an accident, just left in the script because it was overlooked.) Yet it would have been nice to have as much thought given to the rest of the script.Dennehy is his reliable, bulky self. Woods is jumpy and talks at a rapid clip, kind of at odds with the character. He does his best to tone himself down but as an actor he carries a lot of baggage with him and we can't forget that under this icy calm exterior there's a whole nother James Woods aching to bust out.In sum: Not bad, but pretty much middling.

People rush over themselves to praise Al Pacino and Robert De Niro so much that some other great actors who made an impact in the 1970s get overlooked. James Caan is one name that immediately springs to mind, and James Woods is another. Both have appeared in some sub-standard stuff over the years (as have Pacino and De Niro for that matter), but at their best they were/are as good as anybody working today. Twenty years ago Woods starred in one of my all time favourite movies David Cronenberg's stunning 'Videodrome'. He'd already been around for years getting solid character parts but I thought after 'Videodrome', and subsequently co-starring with De Niro in Sergio Leone's 'Once Upon A Time In America', he was going to be recognized as one of the greatest actors of his generation. Sadly for some reason this just didn't happen. Even so I highly recommend underrated 1980s Woods movies like 'Cop', 'The Boost' and this one, 'Best Seller', for some of his greatest performances. The movie itself occasionally gets a bit cheesy in an 80s kind of way, especially the synth score from Jay Ferguson, but overall it's a cut above a lot of similar movies from the period. Director John Flynn had previously made the seriously underrated revenge classic 'Rolling Thunder', and the movie was scripted by exploitation legend Larry Cohen ('Black Caesar', 'Q', 'Maniac Cop', 'The Stuff'). 'Best Seller' isn't quite as good as 'Rolling Thunder', but it's a must see because of Woods, who is just terrific. No-one can play intense like Woods with the possible exception of Christopher Walken. Brian Dennehy is also very good, and Paul Shenar (Sosa from 'Scarface') makes a great villain. Also keep an eye out for a blink and you'll miss it cameo by Seymour Cassel ('In The Soup') as a hired goon. I can't say that 'Best Seller' is one of the greatest thrillers I've ever seen, but it's definitely worth your time, and James Woods playing misunderstood psycho hitman Cleve is an experience not to be missed!