Stick

[Eddie Love]

Elmore Leonard had been cranking out Western stories and novels for decades before he first turned his attention to transplanting his characters into present day settings. Soon after, he became something of a literary sensation and began appearing routinely on bestseller lists around 1983 the year he published La Brava and Stick. (Or was Glitz his breakthrough? Personally, La Brava has always been my favorite Leonard novel, probably because it was the first I read. It was never filmed, though Dustin Hoffman’s flirtation with the property would serve as the basis for Get Shorty.) Career-skidding director and star Burt Reynolds filmed STICK in 1984, though it languished in the can for some time. It’s one of the adaptations Leonard long bemoaned, until the explosion of quality pictures based on his work in the late 90s. I finally caught up with it, and while it’s no classic, it is a more than watchable, underrated 80s programmer.

Burt plays ex-con Ernest Stickly, but you can call him “Stick” – everyone does. He’s fresh out of the joint and trying to stay on the outside when he watches his buddy Jose Perez mowed down by a crazed albino thug in a drug pay-off gone bad in the Everglades. Stick wants revenge on the oddball middleman (Charles Durning) who set up the score and, in the process, becomes the driver and muscle for an obnoxious Palm Beach millionaire (George Segal – absolutely terrible) who likes to surround himself with rough trade and staffs up his estate with ex-cons and hangs out with Miami-based crooks, including Durning.

That conflagration in the ‘glades is a pretty solid action scene, and like other parts of STICK has an almost-Grindhouse luridness to the violence, as do some really old-school montages of the villains shaking people down on the street for info on Stick. The main villain, played by legendary stuntman Dar Robinson is really creepy and effective in these scenes and he performs a really great stunt towards the end. (He died the following year.) The violent bits are scored with those pulsating Tangerine Dream-ish ominous chords that may seem dated but are still effective.

(Speaking of dated, though, Burt sports a pink Members-Only jacket for much of the film’s second half and before that we see him getting into shape by running in short-shorts with blinding white tube socks pulled up practically to his knees.)



Reynolds the director doesn’t entirely embrace the potential of the Leonard material where hard-bitten heroes face off against richly drawn, whacked-out crazies, but he’s not oblivious to the ambitious flourishes of the source material. They come out mostly in Durning’s sensational performance. Donning a garish strawberry-blond wig and fake eyebrows, the Reynolds mainstay’s turn as the pill-popping, low-level dope dealer has no vanity and is just a superior acting job, sometimes hard to watch it’s so believable, yet also laugh-out loud funny. Durning’s an actor so beloved in Hollywood he was twice Oscar nominated for mainstream commercial films with no serious critical credentials, and he’s as good here. (He’d score again in a Leonard role as the heavy in Abel Ferrara’s underrated film of CAT CHASER.)

Reynolds, however, maybe drops a step in his own performance. In the pink neon noir-ish opening scenes he comes off as a stony-faced loner. But in the more comic Palm Beach party scenes that follow, it feels like Burt’s too undisciplined not to want to loosen up and join in the fun. These include some nicely jokey scenes between Stick and a young black ex-con who also works at the estate that are lively. But the mood doesn’t fully connect back to the Stick of the earlier scenes. By the way, there’s also a terrific cameo by Alex Rocco as a shady Hollywood small-timer that’s a precursor to the Gene Hackman character in GET SHORTY. (He’s pitching a movie called “Cowboy and the Alien”.)

Also on the estate Burt romances the glamorous yet strikingly lifeless form of Candice Bergen as a hotshot financial advisor to Segal. The two cuddle up in front of a bonfire on the beach – the exact same move Burt put on Lauren Hutton in GATOR -- I guess we know his game. The two have an understated, you could even say “mature” courtship that’s believable enough, but would, of course, play better with a more expressive actress in the part.

I’m not entirely sure what scenes in the film are from the supposedly extensive re-shoots, but I can’t remember Stick having a daughter in the book and it does seem like a really non-Leonard touch. (Although, these scenes are well-played by Reynolds, even if he does undercut his efforts with an over-reliance on close-ups whenever he has a big scene.) The kid figures prominently and implausibly in the film’s second climax, yet she’s nowhere to be seen in the shots that follow where Burt and Candy re-connect over an Anne Murray Lite-FM number that’s credited to Reynolds among others.

I guess you can voice the complaint that STICK has off-putting shifts in tone, while Leonard’s books manage to weave ironic wit and menace interchangeably. But I didn’t mind. Like Reynolds’ best film as a director – SHARKEY’S MACHINE – I think this picture moves from the rambunctious ensemble feel of some scenes to believably sinister set pieces pretty well. It’s not a fine film or necessarily a memorable one, but it is solidly entertaining.