The Big Fix (1978)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Director:

Jeremy Kagan

Writers:

Roger L. Simon (novel)
Roger L. Simon (screenplay)

Release Date:

6 October 1978 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

Richard Dreyfuss as Moses Wine, private detective. So go figure...

Plot Keywords:

Detective | Politician | Political Activist | Investigator | Reunion

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Richard Dreyfuss	...	Moses Wine
Susan Anspach	...	Lila Shay
Bonnie Bedelia	...	Suzanne
John Lithgow	...	Sam Sebastian
Ofelia Medina	...	Alora
Nicolas Coster	...	Spitzer
F. Murray Abraham	...	Eppis
Fritz Weaver	...	Oscar Procari, Sr.
Jorge Cervera Jr.	...	Jorge
Michael Hershewe	...	Jacob
Rita Karin	...	Aunt Sonya
Ron Rifkin	...	Randy
Larry Bishop	...	Wilson
Andrew Bloch	...	Michael Linker
Sidney Clute	...	Mr. Johnson

Runtime:

108 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Sweden:15 | UK:15 (video rating: 1989) | UK:A (original rating) | USA:PG (certificate #25324) | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Norway:15 | Iceland:16

Company:

Universal Pictures

Trivia:

Mandy Patinkin's movie debut.

Quotes:

Moses Wine: Bakunin? Bakunin was a terrorist monster. You are not an authority on Bakunin just because you used to date every terrorist in Soviet Russia, that does not make you an authority.

Movie Connections:

References Star Wars (1977)

Soundtrack:

Why Do Fools Fall in Love

Two levels of nostalgia pervade counterculture gumshoe thriller

When it was released in 1978, there was already a distance built into The Big Fix, based on a detective novel set in the ashes of the counterculture. The story had been commissioned by Rolling Stone magazine from Roger L. Simon, who wrote the script. On its release, the film was already drawing on images of the late 60s that had ceased to be memories but had already entered a misty mythology.

Richard Dreyfuss, fresh from the Spielberg hits (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) that had made him a star. not to mention his Academy Award for The Goodbye Girl), plays Moses Wine, aonetime rebel who has fallen on hardtimes. His wife, Bonnie Bedelia, has divorced him (though he dotes --rather tiresomely -- on his two sons), and he earns his keep as aprivate investigator when not smoking up and playing solitaire Clue in his -- there's no other word -- "pad."

Operatives of a political campaign sign him on to find out who is waging a dirty-tricks campaign to link their candidate to a legendary radical, now disappeared deep into the underground. The story has some interesting twists, particularly those involving Susan Anspach, John Lithgow and F. Murray Abraham, but the plot tends to disappear into holes here and there, as though told in a marijuana haze.

Viewed in the new millennium, The Big Fix unfolds behind two scrims of nostalgia: The one in the story itself, where 60s has-beens, unhappy with how the world has turned, yearn for barricades and love-ins; and the one revealed by the talents who made the movie, where that yearning for the heady days of the counterculture -- Berkeley! Vietnam! Hash brownies! -- has developed its own, peculiarly fusty period flavor.