Stakeout (1987)

Two Cops have to observe a woman. One of them falls in love with her.

Director:

John Badham

Writer:

Jim Kouf

Stars:

Richard Dreyfuss, Emilio Estevez, Madeleine Stowe

2 wins.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Richard Dreyfuss	...	Chris Lecce
Emilio Estevez	...	Bill Reimers
Madeleine Stowe	...	Maria McGuire
Aidan Quinn	...	Richard 'Stick' Montgomery
Dan Lauria	...	Phil Coldshank
Forest Whitaker	...	Jack Pismo
Ian Tracey	...	Caylor Reese
Earl Billings	...	Captain Giles
Jackson Davies	...	FBI Agent Lusk
J.J. Makaro	...	B.C.
Scott Andersen	...	Reynaldo McGuire
Tony Pantages	...	Tony Harmon
Beatrice Boepple	...	Carol Reimers
Kyle Wodia	...	Jeffrey Reimers (as Kyle Woida)
Jan Speck	...	Kelly McDonald

Storyline

Two cops are given the 'dirty' job of staking out the home of an escaped convict's ex-girlfriend. Chris and the beautiful girlfriend accidentally meet and fall in love. Just as Chris' confesses, the convict appears, but will she betray him ?

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Plot Keywords:

love | joke | shower | automobile | hiding under a bed | 

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Taglines:

It's a tough job but somebody's got to do it!

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Genres:

Action | Comedy | Crime | Romance | Thriller

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

5 August 1987 (USA)

Also Known As:

Dos policías al acecho

Filming Locations:

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Box Office

Gross:

$65,673,233 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Touchstone Pictures, Silver Screen Partners II, Cinderella

Technical Specs

Runtime:

117 min

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) Dolby (35 mm prints)

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Val Kilmer was originally cast as Richard "Stick" Montgomery but dropped out before filming began.

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Goofs

The driver disappears as the car hits the river.

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Quotes

[after Marie hit him]
Richard "Stick" Montgomery: Don't you *ever* hit me.

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Connections

Referenced in Jersey Girl (2004)

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Soundtracks

"Rhythm Is Gonna Get You"
Written by Gloria Estefan (as Gloria M. Estefan) & Enrique Elías García (as Enrique Garcia)
Performed by Gloria Estefan and The Miami Sound Machine
Courtesy of CBS Records Inc.

User Reviews

Amusing moments

This is kind of funny and, for the most part, enjoyable. On the surface it looks like another comic cop thriller but, really, the core of the plot couldn't be older. That is -- it goes way past "The Gay Divorcée," past the Greek or Roman from whom Shakespeare stole "A Comedy of Errors," back past the masques, winding up somewhere I would guess around Homo cromagnonsesis in Les Ezyies de Tayac. The mistaken-identity plot is framed by a bit of violence. First, Dreyfus gets into a fist fight with a perp he and Estevez are chasing (Estevez is nothing much more than a straight man in this movie) and the two combatants fall into a huge container of fish and barely escape being filleted by the Chinese workers. The second involves a shoot out between Aidan Quinn's villain and a lot of cop cars and owes a lot to the chase in "Bullitt", although done mostly for laughs. At the end there is another strictly conventional shootout and fist fight, aboard a boat, on top of rolling logs (this is Seattle), and in a timber mill which gives us a good idea of how gigantic saws are used to turn logs into planks -- and men into planks as well, given half a chance.

Quinn is excellent, but so is almost everyone else. Madeleine Stowe is drop-dead gorgeous, with or without Hispanic makeup, and she can act too. Dreyfus is very funny. He is caught in all sorts of embarrassing situations and gets a chance to display that expression of abject humiliation that he does so well. He gets a chance to do a lot of physical comedy too, running around wearing a pink sun hat, wrapped in a shawl, while pursued by the police. And when he inadvertently reveals he is spying on Stowe, during a phone call in which he warns her that her food is burning, she demands to know how he knew. He tears his eyes from the telescope and tells her, "I -- er -- I could hear is sizzling in the background." Then he turns his face to the side, wrinkled with disgust, and hisses to himself -- "Heard it SIZZLING in the background?" There are all sorts of run-ins in which she still thinks he is the phone repairman he's been pretending to be, and they're all engagingly cute.

It's not a masterpiece of comedy, and the realistic violence is out of place. But it's smoothly, professionally done. There is an icky them song, but the composer gives Stowe's scenes a bouncy fingido-sabor-Latino sound. I've seen this a couple of times and keep waiting to be bored by it but have never quite been able to get over the hump.