So imagine a buddy cop movie. Only one of the Buddies is an extremely well-trained borderline sociopath who used to work as a professional Hitman and almost killed the guy he's now teamed up with.
Now the two of them have to work together to take down some rich Reaganite billionaire degenerate who used to hire out the one killer to kill people to keep his corporation on the level.
Brian Dennehy plays this mediocre cop who ends up the victim of an incredibly elaborate heist in where a bunch of people storm into an Evidence Locker wearing Nixon masks and steel over $200,000.
He's shot several times during the escapade but is the only Survivor amongst his crew. Later on he'll write a book about his experience amongst a few others and make a pretty pension off of his literary success.
He lives relatively well for a couple of years until his writing dries up and he becomes too tired to continuously be on patrol.
It gets to a point where he's nearly killed by a would-be assailant but it's been saved by this mystery man that pops out of nowhere and vanishes just as quickly.
This mystery man in question is played by James Woods. And he ends up being the very man who stabbed our protagonist cop at the beginning of the story. He's involved with this humongous conspiracy to take down several wealthy Elite because of all the dirty jobs he did for them over the years.
I guess he had a crisis of conscience or decided; ''To hell with it. I might as well help this guy out because I've got nothing better to do.''
We're not really giving a good reason for his aspiration he goes on about having morals and believing in good and trusting people but is himself a Hired Gun who will kill anybody
It's a nice simple Duality, and I think his character only survives because James Wood is able to give such a wonderfully unique and intriguing performance.
He doesn't go completely over the top with a psychopath angle but he's not a teddy bear either.
He's really good at walking the line and you become so horribly fascinated by he's method that you kind of start the route for him. Even though he's a bloodthirsty crazy man who could and would kill you at any given point if given the right opportunity.
I don't know why but I've always loved characters like that in film. Like I've got this strange connection to the way they act and they're awkward mannerisms and general disinterest towards basic Society, it's just so intriguing.
Obviously in real life creeps like this don't work out that way. They're just weird awkward little man who make you incredibly uncomfortable and remind you of why you would never actually want to encounter a psychopath in real life.
But that's the beauty of film, we can pump everything up to a fantasy level and exploring angle of the humanities that really doesn't exist within real life.
Anyways the half of the film that's just James Woods and Brian Dennehy interacting with each other and going about their weird case, it's really good.
They have a surprisingly solid chemistry and this tight-knit Razors Edge friendship that could fall apart at any moment if either just goes a little too far out of line.
But at the same time they also have to contend with a pretty bog-standard detective story in where they're going against the hardened criminal boss who uses his political and muscle connections to harass our main characters while they're trying to break him down.
All that stuff becomes really predictable and you can practically predict what's going to happen to everybody towards the end of the movie.
I almost wish this film was done by a slightly more independent company. If only it was just a little bit more out of the studio system but honestly it just can't be done.
So we're stuck with what we got, and what we get is okay. Paul Shenar as the villain is quite entertaining. It's a shame that he doesn't get more screen time given that I always want to see more of the guy.
Unfortunately he just doesn't have a big screen presence out there. To the best of my knowledge she has a bunch of Shakespearean work but nothing that's on recorded film. Oh well at least we have films like Scarface for him at least.
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