Hustle (1975)

Phil Gaines is a bitter, cynical cop who investigates the case of a dead stripper/porno actress found on the beach. Gaines is experiencing a troubled relationship with a hooker, and things ... See full summary »

Director:

Robert Aldrich

Writer:

Steve Shagan

Stars:

Burt Reynolds, Catherine Deneuve, Ben Johnson

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Burt Reynolds	...	Lt. Phil Gaines
Catherine Deneuve	...	Nicole Britton
Ben Johnson	...	Marty Hollinger
Paul Winfield	...	Sgt. Louis Belgrave
Eileen Brennan	...	Paula Hollinger
Eddie Albert	...	Leo Sellers
Ernest Borgnine	...	Santoro
Catherine Bach	...	Peggy Summers
Jack Carter	...	Herbie Dalitz
James Hampton	...	Bus Driver
Colleen Brennan	...	Gloria Hollinger (as Sharon Kelly)
Chuck Hayward	...	Morgue Attendant
David Estridge	...	Albino
Peter Brandon	...	Minister
David Spielberg	...	Jerry Bellamy

Storyline

Phil Gaines is a bitter, cynical cop who investigates the case of a dead stripper/porno actress found on the beach. Gaines is experiencing a troubled relationship with a hooker, and things don't get any better when the dead girl's father launches his own investigation.

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Plot Keywords:

beach | suicide | prostitute | police | film within a film | 

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Taglines:

She's the call girl. He's the cop. They both take their jobs seriously.

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

25 December 1975 (USA)

Also Known As:

All the Other Angels

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Paramount Pictures, Churchill Service Company, RoBurt

Technical Specs

Runtime:

120 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Did You Know?

Trivia

Director Robert Aldrich once said of this film: "This isn't the first police story, nor the last. What is unique is the fascinating variety of characters, multi-faceted and interesting in depth."

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Quotes

Lt. Phil Gaines: Don't you know where you live, Marty? Can't you smell the bananas? You know what country you live in? You live in Guatamala with color television.

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Connections

Featured in A Little Romance (1979)

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Soundtracks

"Yesterday When I Was Young"
by Charles Aznavour
English lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer
Sung by Charles Aznavour
Courtesy of Barclay Records

User Reviews

The good, the bad and the indifferent

At times it's hard to know quite what to make of Hustle. There's certainly a good film in there, but there's also a bad one as well and Robert Aldrich doesn't make the two into something entirely cohesive. Joseph Biroc's photography is somewhat schizophrenic too. The police station interiors and night shots look great with a classic neo-noir look to them with their deep blacks, but some of the daytime work looks like painfully artificial TV movie stuff. Some of the editing is awkward and some of the writing so on the nose it's like someone decided to film 'My First Cop Movie' while the references to Moby Dick (the film, not the book) come over as Symbolism 101, but then it delivers something good enough for you to want to file away and use yourself at a later date.

Where it scores is in its portrait of a job and a place where you can all too easily lose all sense of yourself, a side of Los Angeles the film captures remarkably well (there's a reason so many Angelinos move to different States or even countries). Burt Reynolds' cop is so desensitised to his job that he obliviously talks to the morgue staff about football scores while escorting a father to see his daughter's dead body, behaviour no-one finds shocking in a place where people only count if they're 'somebody.' In many ways the most impressive thing about it is its determination to avoid becoming a murder mystery: no-one, least of all Reynolds, has any interest in investigating a murder, and neither does the film. Instead it's more interested in the emotional fallout from the death and how it affects (or rather fails to affect) those around the death. It all ends in violence, naturally, albeit with the caveat that you end up paying for the sins you didn't commit rather than the ones you did.