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The title gives the protagonist's nickname, along with the punchline to a joke about faulty boomerangs. The thief "back among civilians," from boxcar hobo to millionaire's chauffeur or rather from bearded Burt Reynolds to mustached Burt Reynolds. He slouches at a wharfside bar and literally lights a fire under a boor's ass, a matchbox trick that comes in handy during a botched drug run that allows for a tangy panorama of the Everglades. Hiding from killers, he bumps into a moneyed blowhard locked out of his limo (George Segal) and puts his carjacking skills to use, next thing he knows he's moved into his mansion and is hitting on his financial advisor (Candice Bergen). "You know, I can't help it. I like you." Elmore Leonard's noir Miami pictured by Reynolds is a promising notion muffed by studio interference, traces of the novelist's punchy vaudeville and the actor-director's shaggy melancholia nevertheless survive the reshooting and recutting. A soulful tough-guy among cartoon sharks, the hero placates a party-crashing musclehead by dousing him with gasoline before bantering with his teen daughter (Tricia Leigh Fisher) about junk food. Charles Durning as the drug peddler with orange wig and eyebrows might be Lynch's Baron Harkonnen in floral shirts, Dar Robinson as the hitman is virtually an albino android last seen plunging and blasting in a justly noted stunt. (Both are downright Bressonian next to the manic cigar-chewing of Segal, whose chipper nouveau riche describes himself as "an understated kind of guy.") "Romance, adventure, humor and yes... spirituality" comprise the movie pitch promptly exposed as "fraud." Reynolds' experience goes into The Last Producer as surely as Edwards' experience in The Carey Treatment goes into S.O.B. With José Pérez, David Reynoso, Richard Lawson, Cástulo Guerra, Alex Rocco, and Sachi Parker.
--- Fernando F. Croce |