Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Movie review - "Partners" (1982) **

 The US success of La Cage Aux Follies prompted a brief boom in Hollywood gay themeed films of which this was one, probably the least remembered today. It's high concept - straight cop and gay cop team up to find gay killer in San Franscisco - sunk by its casting. The straight cop needed to be Clint Eastwood or Nick Nolte or someone so OTT macho that he is a fish out of water but instead there's pretty boy Ryan O'Neal who while IRL was a womaniser and boxer and man's man was also a pretty boy film star fave of the ladies who co starred twice against Barbara Streisand.  So it would've have been funnier watching Clint in leather trying to pick up, Ryan's not that funny.

Okay maybe O'Neal's casting could have worked if played off against a really strong gay character - a big drag queen say, someone unapologetically flamboyant. O'Neal did a great slow burn against Barbara Streisand. But John Hurt is meek, mild and sad, so it's not fun when O'Neal yells at him.

Maybe a more visusally impressive setting too might've helped like Miami or something. 

Support cast includes James Remar, Robyn Douglass (reminding us Galactica 1980 fans that she was beautiful and could act), Kenneth MacMillan.

Best scene is when homophobic cops arrest O'Neal, Hurt and skinny dippying gay. The murder mystery itself, involving Douglass, isn't bad.

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