The golden age of film noir — cynical, sinister and shadowy thrillers about crime and the unchanging nature of human criminality — was the 1940s and ’50s, when black and white cinema still ruled.
The genre never really went away, but it had an Eastmancolor revival in the ’70s as Robert Altman (“The Long Goodbye”), Roman Polanski (“Chinatown”), Mike Hodges (“Get Carter”), Lumet, Penn and Pakula tried their hands at “hard boiled.”
It’s been a writer’s genre from the start, with screenwriter/directors like John Huston adapting pulp novels by Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler, or imitating their style in original scripts, taking care to preserve the flinty characters, seedy settings and quotable, tough-guy/tougher-gal dialogue.
One of the great screenwriters of his era — the Oscar-winning writer and sometimes writer-director Robert Benton — served up “hard boiled” characters, settings and dialogue all well past their expiration date in “The Late Show,” a picture that marked a “comeback” for aged TV star Art Carney of “The Honeymooners,” and a big screen star-making turn for comedienne turned character player (“Nashville”) Lily Tomlin.
It’s a brisk, dark and immensely quotable L.A. private eye yarn about murders, missing stamps, a femme fatale and the downmarket side of showbiz inhabited by aged has-beens and younger never-will-be’s.
Benton, who scripted “Bonnie and Clye,” the Western “Bad Company,” the ’70s screwball “What’s Up, Doc?”, who won Oscars for “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Places in the Heart,” would pull off a similar “AARP noir” pic with 1998’s “Twilight.”
The plot is elaborate and willfully convoluted. And the dialogue? Strictly hard-you-know-what.
“I’m sorry, doll. What I never told you is this is the hardest goddamn way in the world to make a buck.”
The chatter passes by in a rush, with characters talking over each other here and there. Robert Altman produced the picture, and members of his repertory company (Tomlin, Bob Considine and Howard Duff) show up. It’s Benton’s film, but it’s no insult to label its light, often goofy tone, pacing and quirky characters “Altmanesque.”
An old pal (Duff) stumbles into the room aged loner Ira Wells (Carney) rents from a little old widow with a hint of dementia. That old pal is bleeding from a gunshot wound Ira instantly IDs as “a .45.” Landlady Mrs. Schmidt (Ruth Nelson) calls the police and asks for an ambulance without really registering what’s happened. Later shoot-outs in front of and into her house don’t phase her either.
Ira? “You’re dyin’, Harry. Who did this to ya?”
Similarly sleezy Charlie (Bill Macy of “My Favorite Year” and TV’s “Maude”) buttonholes Ira at Harry’s funeral. Today of all days he wants Ira to find this dizzy ex-actress’s (Tomlin) kidnapped cat.
Margo talks. A lot. And very fast. Reminding her to “cut to the chase” doesn’t always help.
“This little kitty is just a little honey bun. Give this little cat a break!
Yeah, the missing cat’s related to what Harry was mixed up in — stolen goods, guns, blackmail. Ira’s on the job, “$25 a day, plus expenses.” Because Ira’s got a mission.
“Whoever it was who killed Harry is going to be goddamned sorry.”
Asking around and getting Charlie — a Hollywood hustler with a dozen “talent” related businesses he passes off as legit — to do the same points Ira at a stolen goods handling loan shark named Birdwell (Eugene Roche), Birdwell’s “muscle” (Considine) and Birdwell’s young, straying sexpot wife (Joanna Cassidy of “Blade Runner,” “Under Fire” and TV’s “Six Feet Under”).
“The cops” are but a distant, empty threat lying just outside the machinations of this crowd. Ira takes punches and mentions “lead” he’s still carrying around from some dame’s pistol from back in the ’50s. He’s seen it all and maybe he’s gotten wise in the process, or maybe not. His prices were already way out of date. He’s wearing a baggy, worn-out suit, taking notes and packing a revolver. He’s a walking anachoronism.
“Back in the ’40s, this town was crawlin’ with dollies like you. Good-lookin’ coquettes tryin’ their damnedest to act tough as hell. I got news for you — they did it better back then. This town doesn’t change – they just push the names around.”
Dizzy Margo runs some sort of “talent” business in her comically-overdecorated apartment and is nobody’s idea of “tough at hell.” But she’s rough around the edges. And yeah, she can raise cash the old fashioned (in the ’70s) way, and talk you to death telling you how.
“You know what I had to go through to hassle up this dough? I laid off four ounces of pure red Colombian for $15 an ounce. I mean, it’s disgusting. Some freak over on Pico thinks I’m Santa Claus, I swear to God. $15 an ounce… $15 an ounce. This grass was so great, I can’t tell you. There was so much resin in it, it made your lips stick together.”
There’s a late night car chase that’s thrilling and laugh-out-loud funny, and not just because it’s a ’68 Toyota Corona chasing a beater of a ’64 Dodge van.
Benton’s glory years were well underday, his Oscars just a couple of years off. But he takes pains to make the stakes life-and-death and the plot of this parody plausible, if kind of laughable, with or without the rat-a-tat dialogue.
The beatings are kind of convincing, the shoot-outs as on-and-off target as you’d expect. And through it all, the unlikeliest “buddies” of the buddy picture era shine, setting off grousing, grumbling comic sparks every time they connect.
It was Ms. “Evolved” vs. Mr. “Unevolved,” a running theme through Tomlin’s comedy over the decades. But here, evolution doesn’t stand a chance against the grumpy grandpa patriarchy.
“That’s just what this town has been waiting for. A broken-down old private eye with a bum leg and a hearing aid, and a fruitcake like you.”
Rating: PG, violence, profanity
Cast: Art Carney, Lily Tomlin, Bill Macy, Joanna Cassidy, and Howard Duff.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Robert Benton, scripted by A Warner Bros. release on Tubi.
Running time: 1:33
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