"Mad Dog and Glory" (1993)

On this special day, I got to watch a favourite actor of mine. Mr. Robert De Niro, great guy. And yet again he is in a crime/gangster kind of movie. Sounds pretty exciting right? Well it does have a bit of a twist, roles are kind of reversed. But hey, it was playing on the television and it sucked me in. Even though it wasn’t my favourite De Niro movie, it was still … well I won’t give it away. Let me cut to the chase about “Mad Dog and Glory” after the jump.

Wayne ‘Mad Dog’ Dobie (De Niro) is a shy detective that lives a lonely life. He gets brought into a crime scene when a drug deal goes wrong. He catches up with the drug runner at a convenience store holding up Frank (Bill Murray). Wayne talks down the criminal long enough to spare Frank’s life. What Wayne later discovers is that Frank is a mob boss and would like to thank Wayne for saving his life by offering a companion, Glory (Uma Thurman). But the last thing Wayne needs is a connection to a mob boss, how does he handle Glory’s delicate situation without raising suspicion?

"We could of been friends Frank"

The story has a real b-list kind of comedy to it. But the most off putting part is the weird roles for Murray and De Niro. I mean, De Niro is the shy, quirky detective and Murray is the cold but humorous gangster? I’m not sure I exactly bought it, made more sense if the two switched roles. For most of the movie, Murray does a fairly swell job of pulling off the mob boss who night lights as a comedian. But when the more serious moments of his character comes up, he just flops. Though maybe if I never knew both these actors it would be easier to believe their roles, for the most part they did well. Neat thing, David Caruso is Frank’s side kick. He was greatly a bigger badass than Frank. Sadly he never put on his glasses and said one of his great one liners, though he was still fun to watch.

Even though the characters weren’t stellar, the humour was the brighter aspect of the movie. I was never laughing my pants off, but it did bring a few smiles here and there. But none of these credits really go to Frank’s comedy act. Instead, Harold (Mike Starr) was the center of comedy here. Besides being the right hand man to Frank, he shows up at key moments and brings relief to the tacky serious moments. It wasn’t so much the dialogue but how he related to certain situations.

And you thought your first date was awkward.

On the other hand, even his comedy couldn’t save some of the more awkward parts of the movie. Example one, Uma Thurman’s character. Now I am not sure if it was her acting abilities or the terrible character but she was so annoying. She tried to pull off the nervous and I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-I-got-myself-into roll, but instead just was jerky and twitchy. Second example, the sex scene between Frank and Glory, to put it bluntly, I’ve seen more erotic love making on Nation Geographic. Maybe that was the point, it was Wayne’s first time and he didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I seriously was considering fast forwarding though it. But like a train wreck or a dying insect, I couldn’t look away. If you want your kids to never have sex ever, show them this clip. It’s a better contraceptive than the Pope.

Overall, this movie isn’t all that great. There are a few moments that were nice to watch, but a lot of it was awkward and felt rushed together. Like I said before, I didn’t like De Niro and Murray with what I thought were the wrong roles and I never like Uma Thurman. Even the comedy couldn’t really save this movie from its mediocrity. Then again, if you want to scare your kids from the evils of coitus, show ‘em the clip when Uma Thurman is sucking on De Niro’s nose, that’ll give them nightmares.