Sigh....

Well, I had forgotten I had already seen this movie once, but I had forgotten how terrible it was.

The bad: this movie (labeled as a "comedy") simply is NOT funny whatsoever. And I mean I did not laugh once. Nor did I smile. Nor was there the tinniest smirk on my face.

Why did this movie fail so terribly. Well, it isnt a slapstick movie and it isnt an action movie either. So it is trying to mix two movie genres and ending up being neither.

Not any good then? The camera work is allright. It doesnt look like it was a movie that was rushed or was battered with financial difficulties. They really tried to make a decent comedy, but they failed. Full stop.

This is a great movie. Generally I find American Comedies dull, but this is seriously great. The wit is very clever: my favourite being the license for sex, and some of the slapstick is quite amusing. The plot is not deep but the movie is what I call a fun movie.

The movie stars Gene Hackman, who plays far better bad guys that good guys, though in this movie he was good. Then there is Dan Ackroyd who simply steals the show with his antics. Ackroyd is a very good actor as he can take on different roles. Early in his career he seemed to play simply comic roles, such as the Blues Brothers, but recently he has taken a little more serious approach to his roles, such as the assassin in Grosse Point Blanc. Loose Cannons has him playing a cop with multiple personalities, and some of them, such as the Road Runner, are a hoot.

As for attitudes, I guess it deals mainly with tolerance for those who are mentally disabled. Ackroyd's character is disabled due to a painful experience in the past, and Hackman puts in effort to actually help Ackroyd return to his job and overcome his experience. It played a little part of the film, but not much. Moreso it was an action/comedy flick.

The one thing that concerned me was that the title had little to do with the movie. A loose cannon is somebody who does not take part in the team, somebody who is not under control and goes about doing their own thing. Obviously it comes from the times of wooden sailing ships in that if a cannon was not secure, it could roll all over the ship and possibly cause quite a lot of damage. These guys did not seem to be loose cannons, rather they were involved in a case and were doing what they could to solve it. There was no big police cover up and their superiors were not ordering them to desist from the case. Other than that, which is minor, but I tend to drag up minor things, it was a good movie.

MacArthur Stern (Gene Hackman) is a grizzled veteran Washington D.C. police detective. His new partner Ellis Fielding (Dan Aykroyd) is brilliant and has multiple personalities. The duo investigates a West German politician, a series of murders, and yes... Nazis.

With Bob Clark, Dan Aykroyd, Gene Hackman and Dom DeLuise, I had some hope for this lesser known comedy to be good. The basic structure is a standard buddy cop comedy. Gene Hackman does a good job, but Dan Aykroyd can't do crazy here. Certainly he can't do it to get a laugh. Mostly he is ridiculous, doing a bad interpretation of the Road Runner. Both men are professional, and there is some chemistry. It's just not enough to give this a recommendation.