ianlouisiana Review of Hickey & Boggs

Hickey & Boggs (1972)

The city of the fallen angels never looked more beautiful.........

[10/10 · 23 August 2008]

Los Angeles never looked more beautiful,nor more corrupt.White and shimmering in the heat but dark deep in its soul.The city of the fallen angels - as James Ellroy has it - hides its decay beneath a glittering carapace,a muddied area where down - at - heel private detectives like Hickey and Boggs swirl around in a vortex of robbers,whores,pimps,cops and hangers - on of every persuasion.Also - rans in the P.I. business,H & B are hired to trace a missing woman,an assignment that turns out to be not quite what it seems. Mr Robert Culp directed this movie and co - stars in it with Mr Bill Cosby.It has the edgy,urban feel of the 90s cop movie,with racial and sexual politics heavily featured,a genre that was to become commonplace two decades later.A fine script by Walter Hill helps,but Mr Culp must take the lion's share of the credit for producing a movie that is enthralling,exciting and thought - provoking as well as being entertaining.He and Mr Cosby display the casual but deep - rooted amity and familiarity that takes years of working together to develop.They have plenty of good throwaway lines but they're not the Abbot and Costello of private eyes,more the Hawkeye and Trapper. "Hickey and Boggs" is a movie where the sights and even sounds of the city become like a character who has no lines but whose presence is clearly felt.Not since Chandler - who professed to hate it and considered it had "all the personality of a paper cup" - had L.A. exercised such an influence on a movie.A few years later "Chinatown" would best it,but Mr Culp got there first.Was he just lucky with his first movie?Well,he never got to test golfer Sam Torrance's retort when he was described as "lucky" - "The more I win,the luckier I seem to get" said the Greatest Living Scotsman.Mr Culp,on the other hand,made just the one movie.And he did it supremely well.I don't think luck had anything to do with it.