Wise Guys

Brian De Palma is one of my all-time favorite directors. So there are very few of his films that I haven't seen. Well, okay, he made a lot of random little weird films in the 60's that aren't terribly well-regarded or easily available on DVD. Films like Murder a la Mod and The Wedding Party. I have seen Greetings, an oddball little comedy with De Niro from this era, but that's it.

But after Hi Mom in 1970, the only two titles I had missed were 1972's Get to Know Your Rabbit (which co-stars Orson Welles!) and the 1986 mob comedy Wise Guys. It comes to DVD today (Tuesday), so I finally got a chance to see it. It's by no means a bad film, and it's clear that De Palma has a wacky, warped sense of humor, but the thing is dragged down by a dumb script full of obvious, broad jokes and a painfully overdone supporting turn from then-"Saturday Night Live" superstar Joe Piscopo.



I was only 8 years old in 1986, and I only vaguely remember Joe Piscopo from his television heydey, but did people genuinely find this guy funny? He's truly awful in this movie. I checked out Roger Ebert's review before watching the movie, written back in '86, and he actually praises Piscopo's hysterical theatrics:

Piscopo, from "Saturday Night Live," has worked less in the movies, and has always seemed in search of a character. Here he finds one.

Sadly, no. Piscopo's constant bleating and mugging makes Gene Wilder in The Producers look positively restrained. Several scenes call for him to scream in fear, which he takes as an excuse to imitate a "Looney Tunes" character, wiggling his face around as if he expects his eyeballs to explode out of their sockets and his tongue to droop down to the floor, Tex Avery-style. Ugh.

The script by George Gallo (who wrote the far better Midnight Run) is not very funny, but it does have a terrific premise. For a light comedy, sometimes that's enough. Moe (Piscopo) and his somewhat more ambitious next-door neighbor Harry (Danny DeVito) are low-level mob enforcers. Low, low, low level. They run personal errands for a boss named Tony (Dan Hedaya, a great character actor wasted in a nothing role).

On one occasion, they are escorted by a goon named The Fixer (pro-wrestling legend Captain Lou Albano) to the racetrack, to lay a bet on a horse for Tony. But the thing is, Tony is a horrible gambler, and always picks a losing horse. So this gives Harry an idea...They use Tony's 10 grand to bet on a winning horse and keep the proceeds. Tony will think he has simply lost another bet.

Anyone who has seen a comedy can predict what happens next...Tony's horse wins, it's revealed that these two idiots bet on the wrong horse, and a contract is put out on their heads.

The film then turns into a road movie, with Harry and Moe on the run from The Fixer and Tony. They go to Atlantic City, seeking help from a casino owner from the old neighborhood (Harvey Keitel) and a well-connected uncle.

It's a promising-enough premise, and you have to respect that De Palma and Gallo don't go for incredibly easy mob/guinea stereotypes. Albano's Fixer character is hands down the best thing about a movie. The guy can't act at all, doesn't even attempt to, so he just stomps around and yells, and frequently eats large sandwiches in the middle of scenes. It's brilliant, a triumph of stunt casting.

See, the thing with De Palma is, he makes bold, risky, imaginative, "big" movies. He doesn't hold back. Sometimes comedy requires restraint. I recall John Cleese discussing his screenplay for A Fish Called Wanda in an interview. The film's co-director Charles Crichton and many at the studio feared that the script's repeated scenes in which small poodles are killed would trouble and upset the audience. Cleese insisted that, as long as it doesn't look too bloody or painful, people will find the notion of a flattened poodle funny. Of course, he was right, and the poodle deaths are some of the film's biggest laughs.

De Palma isn't the kind of guy that will take out the poodle gore to save the laugh. He won't just kill the dog, he's spray bloody entrails all over passers-by. In Wise Guys, there's a scene in which Harry is asked by Tony to turn on his car, which may or may not be wired to explode by a rival gang. Rather than just show the situation, and relying on the DeVito performance to get the laugh, De Palma uses sped-up motion, loud music, a 360 camera move and all kind of crowd noises to try to drain more comedy from the scene. It doesn't work.

So Wise Guys is, in the end, way too cartoony and broad to really score. It looks terrific, like all of the guy's films, and I really did enjoy the Lou Albano stuff. DeVito and Keitel are also fun to watch. But I can't really recommend this one, unless like me, you just have to see every film made by BDP.