{"id":2474,"date":"2024-08-18T04:18:06","date_gmt":"2024-08-18T04:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2474"},"modified":"2024-10-13T19:52:13","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:52:13","slug":"tough-guys-dont-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/18\/tough-guys-dont-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"Tough Guys Don\u2019t Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Tough Guys Don\u2019t Dance <\/strong>(1987)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Suspense-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 109 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence, nudity, sex, drugs)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Norman Mailer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Norman Mailer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Angelo Badalamenti\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mike Moyer and John Bailey\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 18, 1987 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ryan O\u2019Neal, Isabella Rossellini, Debra Sandlund, Wings Hauser, John Bedford Lloyd, Lawrence Tierney, Penn Jillette, Frances Fisher, R. Patrick Sullivan, John Snyder, Stephan Morrow, Clarence Williams III.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $858,250 (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0Although Tough Guys Don\u2019t Dance<\/strong> is technically a crime thriller, it\u2019s also an unintentional comedy thanks to the utter ineptitude with which it was made. It\u2019s a bad movie, no two ways about it. At the same time, it\u2019s mesmerizing. It\u2019s a like a twisted train wreck. It\u2019s a horrific sight, but you can\u2019t look away. I missed it when it played at the movies (it was a one-week wonder, no surprise there); I had to wait until it came out on video a few months later. I stayed up late to watch it and afterwards felt as though it robbed me of precious sleep time as well as the rental price. I had no desire to rewatch it until recently. I was curious if I would like it any better. While I can\u2019t say that I like Tough Guys Don\u2019t Dance<\/strong>, I have a better grasp of cinema than I did as a 20YO community college student\/movie geek. I can better identify how, where and why writer-director Norman Mailer failed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In adapting his own novel for the big screen, Mailer has made a confusing, convoluted mess of Tough Guys Don\u2019t Dance<\/strong>. The plot defies explanation. It also defies logic, coherence and gravity. I\u2019ll do my best, but I\u2019m not sure I can do it justice. Don\u2019t expect a miracle.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ex-con\/struggling writer Tim Madden (O\u2019Neal, Love Story) wakes up from a drunken bender with no recollection of recent events. Naturally, he has many questions. Where did the tattoo on his arm come from? What\u2019s with all the blood in his jeep\u2019s passenger seat? Why does the new chief of police, Luther Regency (Hauser, Vice Squad), hate him so much? And, most importantly, who\u2019s severed head did he find in the spot where he hides his marijuana stash? All signs point to him being framed for murder. Who would do this?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Tim recounts the past five days to his dying father Dougy (Tierney, Reservoir Dogs), the only one he doesn\u2019t suspect of setting him up. It all started nearly a month earlier when Tim\u2019s trashy wife Patty Lareine (Sandlund) walked out on him. She\u2019s a materialistic gold-digger with one high-paying divorce under her belt already. She was previously married to an old prep school chum of Tim\u2019s, a rich moron named Wardley Meeks III (Lloyd, The Abyss). One night, Tim meets this strange couple at the local bar, a former porn actress (Fisher, Unforgiven) and her obviously gay husband (Sullivan). Let\u2019s just say they don\u2019t spend the night just talking. Also on the scene is his former girlfriend Madeleine (Rossellini, Blue Velvet) who wants nothing to do with him. There\u2019s also some business about a $2 million cocaine deal. Oh yeah, a second severed head turns up too.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Did I mention Tough Guys Don\u2019t Dance<\/strong> is a mess? That\u2019s right, I did. Characters come and go. The story jumps between past and present. There are flashbacks within flashbacks. The viewer feels as confused and paranoid as the movie\u2019s protagonist. You\u2019d think a crime writer of Mailer\u2019s caliber would be able to put together a cogent screenplay. He might have been if Mailer the director didn\u2019t get in the way. He doesn\u2019t seem to know exactly what he\u2019s going for with Tough Guys Don\u2019t Dance<\/strong>. At times, it wants to be a complex, Big Sleep-like crime noir. Other times, it wants to be a weird, Blue Velvet-like dark comedy. This tonal inconsistency results in a markedly uneven movie. It\u2019s impossible to know how to take it as anything other than a bad movie classic.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting in Tough Guys Don\u2019t Dance<\/strong> is all over the place. There\u2019s a lot of overacting with O\u2019Neal and Hauser being the main offenders. There\u2019s a scene where O\u2019Neal\u2019s character is handed a note containing bad news. When he reads it, he reacts by repeating \u201cOh, God! Oh, man!\u201d about a dozen times while the camera goes wild. The clincher is that he reacts more calmly when he finds the first head. Now that I think of it, the info in the note should not have come as a surprise. O\u2019Neal\u2019s line readings are unnatural and unconvincing. He\u2019s not believable as an ex-con. Hauser delivers a wild-eyed performance as Regency, a Vietnam vet whose psychotic tendencies are clear early on. The guy owns a machete, for Pete\u2019s sake! Lloyd, on the other hands, acts like a character from a Tennessee Williams play with that God-awful accent. It could be Southern, it could be patrician; who knows? Rossellini is positively wasted here. As for Williams (The Mod Squad, 52 Pick-Up), he\u2019s in it for one scene and does nothing. He plays NO part in the movie\u2019s plot. Talk about wasting a cool actor!<\/p>\n

\u00a0The one and only decent performance comes from the gravelly-voiced Tierney who plays the movie\u2019s one and only interesting character. He gets off one of the best lines when he says, \u201cI just deep-sixed two heads.\u201d There\u2019s something inherently cool about Tierney. He was born to play tough guy characters in B-level crime noirs. He gives the movie its sole element of class.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Tough Guys Don\u2019t Dance<\/strong> is filled with bad dialogue like Tim telling an injured thug \u201cYour knife is in my dog\u201d before vandalizing his car with a lead pipe. The topper has to be when Wardley (I love the names in this movie!) says, \u201cI am all wrong for this kind of imbroglio!\u201d Who talks like that?<\/p>\n

\u00a0The score by Angelo Badalamenti, a frequent David Lynch collaborator, is overbearing and intrusive. The opening theme is kind of nice though. The action takes place in Provincetown in winter meaning no tourists. It\u2019s practically a ghost town haunted by residents who feel like malevolent spirits. The cold, bleak look of Tough Guys Don\u2019t Dance<\/strong> is its other high point, but good cinematography doesn\u2019t make up for its many failings. It doesn\u2019t cover up the fact that it makes no sense. It doesn\u2019t make up for the horrendous acting. Simply put, it\u2019s a bad movie but since it\u2019s an entertainingly bad one, it gets a pass (kind-of\/sort-of).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tough Guys Don\u2019t Dance (1987)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Suspense-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 109 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence, nudity, sex, drugs)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Norman Mailer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Norman Mailer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Angelo Badalamenti\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mike Moyer and John Bailey\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 18, 1987 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ryan O\u2019Neal, Isabella Rossellini, Debra Sandlund, Wings Hauser, John Bedford Lloyd, Lawrence Tierney, Penn Jillette, Frances Fisher, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weird-ones"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Tough-Guys-Dont-Dance-PIC.png?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2474"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5644,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2474\/revisions\/5644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}