Bovie Movie

A career criminal who has been deformed since birth is given a new face by a kindly doctor and paroled from prison. It appears that he has gone straight, but he is really planning his revenge on the man who killed his father-figure and sent him to prison.

This routine fish-out-of-water thriller from director Walter Hill offered Arnold Schwarzenegger one of his more interesting action roles before he became a superstar. Playing a stony, monosyllabic Soviet cop poses no real acting problems for the big man, and in James Belushi he has an agreeably foul-mouthed foil, as the pair team up to hunt for an escaped Russian drug dealer. Hill stages a series of entertainingly violent and increasingly silly set pieces, and there’s an eclectic support cast that includes Peter Boyle, Gina Gershon and Laurence Fishburne, when he was still calling himself Larry. 

Bette Midler and Cheers star Shelley Long team up for this distaff buddy comedy, playing women from opposite sides of the tracks who find they have the same two-timing boyfriend (Peter Coyote, in a serious piece of miscasting). This is just the start of their problems, however, as the two aspiring actresses (they share a drama coach, too) are now implicated in a slightly bewildering espionage subplot, and embark on a madcap chase after their man (who may or not have faked his own death), and the truth. Director Arthur Hiller manages to keep the action and comedy rolling along at a fairly boisterous rate, and he’s helped considerably by the assured performances of Midler and Long, who refuse to let the humour lapse for a second.