Downtown (1990)

User Rating:

5.3/10   

Director:

Richard Benjamin

Writer (WGA):

Nat Mauldin (written by)

Release Date:

12 January 1990 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Comedy

Tagline:

When you pound this beat, it pounds you back.

Plot:

Police Officer Alex Kearney works in a rich plush suburb of Philadelphia. (The police station looks...

Plot Keywords:

Police | Cars | Detective | Drugs | Impersonation

Cast

Anthony Edwards	...	Alex Kearney
Forest Whitaker	...	Dennis Curren
Penelope Ann Miller	...	Lori Mitchell
Joe Pantoliano	...	White
David Clennon	...	Jerome Sweet
Art Evans	...	Henry Coleman
Rick Aiello	...	Mickey Witlin
Roger Aaron Brown	...	Lt. Sam Parral
Ron Canada	...	Lowell Harris
Wanda De Jesus	...	Luisa Diaz
Francis X. McCarthy	...	Insp. Ben Glass (as Frank McCarthy)
Kimberly Scott	...	Christine Curren
Ryan McWhorter	...	Ephraim Cain
Danuel Pipoly	...	Skip Markowitz
Maurice Hill	...	Man with dog

Runtime:

96 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Finland:K-16 | Singapore:PG | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Chile:14 | Spain:13 | Sweden:15 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Goofs:

Continuity: When White pulls up to them on the freeway to shoot Dennis, the passenger side window is down, but during the shot where he pulls abreast of them to open fire, he rolls the passenger window down.

Movie Connections:

References The Terminator (1984)

Soundtrack:

I GO TO WORK

Hack Writer Alert

"Downtown" is a box office crash & burn from 1990. Basically it is yet another unsuccessful attempt to follow-up on the success of "Beverly Hills Cop" (without the benefit of Eddie Murphy). These inter-racial, buddy picture, cop movie, comedy-action features simply don't work without a talented comic and Anthony Edwards of "Revenge of the Nerds" fame is only mildly funny. Add to this a more serious group of themes than Murphy had to deal with and the incongruity of mixing these conflicting genres makes the whole a lot less than the sum of its parts.

Yet "Downtown" is more entertaining than its "bomb at the box office" reputation would lead you to believe. The production design, filming, and editing are first class. Although the action scenes are unconvincing, this is due more to lamely inserted comedy elements than cheap staging.

Much is genuinely embarrassing such as when a PCP abuser holds a little girl hostage, with a gun to her head, and the subtext lamely plays the scene for laughs. What genius thought that scene would work? And they wonder why these things lose money? In this exercise in schizoid film-making, Anthony Edwards and Forest Whitaker are the standard odd couple partnering up to solve the murder of Edwards' former partner. Nerd boy Alex (Edwards) in his worst scenes listens to Beach Boys music and in his best scenes is paired with his girlfriend (Penelope Ann Miller).

Alex is a suburban patrolman who has been banished to the worst downtown Philly division because of a confrontation with a slimy bigwig (unconvincingly overplayed by David Clennon). Dennis (Whitaker) is a detective with a lot of baggage that makes it difficult for him to warm up to Alex.

But Alex and Dennis eventually bond (big surprise) and Whitaker turns in a pretty good performance (much too good for this material). Whitaker and Miller assist the marginally talented but generally likable Edwards enough that it is possible for the average viewer to suspend disbelief most of the time and actually get into the story. Just be prepared for a lot of extremely lame moments that would have been more entertaining had the editor relegated them to his deleted scenes bin.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.