Remy McSwain is a New Orleans police lieutenant who investigates the murder of a local mobster. His investigation leads him to suspect that fellow members of the police force may be involved.
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1. I have lived in New Orleans 17 years, and I have never met anyone who sounds like any of these characters.
2. I've only maybe once or twice heard anyone say "chere" at all.
3. I love Mardi Gras. Most folks do. But no one uses it as an all purpose metaphor.
4. No one I know has a stuffed alligator, an alligator lamp, AND an bad accent.
5. This film makes a police officer being acquitted for corruption that he absolutely was guilty of into a victory.
6. It tries to turn this around, but ultimately, this is a film that embraces police corruption. As long as they don't kill another police man's murder.
7. Tipitina's doesn't look…
Downright Hawksian neo-noir, even reminiscent of HIS GIRL FRIDAY, with its snappy, funny dialogue, quickly-sketched but indelible characters, sly moral ambiguity, and economical direction. More romantic comedy than thriller, honestly, although when the violence takes place it's anything but cute.
One of the worst accented films of all time. So terribly accented that you can't even pay attention to the film, which is a shame because Ellen Barkin is a babe.
And Ned Beatty cements himself as the most milquetoast actor to ever lace em' up.
Two very hot people want to fuck, but there's some pesky mob hits (and the fact that he is a corrupt cop who really hopes the deed was not done for even more corrupt cops). It is a great contemporary screwball propelled by two wonderful movie star performances (Barkin is playing Grant to Quaid's Hepburn). McBride directs it with the same deliberate artificiality he brought to his wonderful Breathless remake. A mirror of genres set at movie movie land. Great parade of character actors fill the background (How many movies have Ned Beatty and John Goodman sharing multiple scenes?). Good action, even if the mystery is as pedestrian as it gets. It is as violent as it is sexy. For…
Hit by my usual monthly Quaid fever so I popped this in because “NOLA set neo-noir” is my jam, Quaid and his shit eating grin is my jam, and John Goodman is my jam... but almost everything in this felt so undercooked... so bland and uninteresting that even the actual beautiful Nola locations or that previously mentioned Quaid shit grin couldn’t keep me focused.
Bummer.
distinctly 80s but otherwise ethereal attempt at neo-noir that exists in an alternate universe New Orleans where the characters have an alien dialect in everything is somehow askew — fits in well with other, decidedly strange, noir films of its era like The Blue Iguana or Trouble In Mind, both of which lay on the similarly deadpan humor (this one has a running toupé gag that would be out of place in almost any other crime film) and otherworldly atmosphere
Dennis Quaid’s accent in The Big Easy is more disgusting than him eating shrimp in The Substance.
icky & sticky
icky: it's a cops-are-corrupt movie, but still ultimately a cop movie. in this case, a by-the-book district attorney (ellen barkin) who's set on putting bad cops behind bars (eek) reforms a sleazy lieutenant (dennis quaid)—also eek. quaid plays sleazy very well, by the way; in fact, it's hard not to with a smile like that.
sticky: also hard to deny the chemistry between quaid & barkin is sizzling. plus there's the general swampiness of the new orleans setting that gives this a Body Heat-esque eroticism (way less sweaty though). by the way, i hate when grown men are attached to stuffed animals but was amused by quaid's love for his gator doll.
How quickly my jaw hit the floor when Dennis Quaid opened his mouth and I heard that accent for the first time.
I simply do not jibe with just cutting Quaid some slack for eventually going after two cops on the payroll (Goodman, Roe Smith) and a captain (Beatty), set to retire, over killing crime family members (and their leaders) and securing 5 million in heroin from being so on the take. Using a magnet to erase video of taking a bribe then swallowing an envelope and tossing money in the air when a parolee operating a bar keeps getting fleeced by other department cops to get himself out of a crime with the IA, Quaid can toss all the charm and charisma he wants at us...still doesn't make his activities any less criminal.
But, dammit, I LOVE Barkin in this film.…
Look, I like genre deconstructions as much as the next man, providing the next man is pretentious enough to use the phrase "genre deconstructions". But if you're going to rip something out of a film, you'd better put something interesting back in its place. The Big Easy is one of those 1980s films which aimed to reinvent film noir for a post-Hays Code audience, and like Sea of Love and Body Heat it replaces sexual tension with actual sex.
Those films managed to find other ways to make their central relationships fraught without the will-they-won't-they question, though. One of the mystifying things about The Big Easy is that Daniel Petrie Jr.'s script comes up with a great problem for its…
The first shot of Dennis Quaid is Jim McBride just capturing that 10000000-watt goofball smile up close and in your face and it's such a movie star moment. Always liked Quaid a ton but viewed him as like right below the mega huge leading men of his era but when you see him in something like this it's immediately obvious that that's a failing on his directors, not him.
This is such a delight. The dialogue has the rhythm of a 40s screwball laid over a lackadaisical bayou noir but with some pretty shocking violence. Quaid and Ellen Barkin have such hot chemistry and are genuinely funny together. The supporting cast is full of great faces, including a young John Goodman who you first see shimmying in the background of the police station and Lisa Jane Persky who's seemingly plucked right out of another era. Real good stuff.
