The Big Fix

[Eddie Love]

Towards the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s mainstream Hollywood famously turned their attention to the war in Vietnam, the prosecution of which resulted in vast cultural upheavals on the homefront and a period of intense internal divisiveness. There are some now classic films about the war itself, but around this same time there were a smaller handful of films that looked at the same period and its aftermath; that dramatized the student and protest movements at home, a period in the 60s that would become remembered as “The 60s”. There were fewer of these films and, unlike ones about the war itself, none are classics, maybe because, unlike military conflict, it’s harder to convincingly portray these kinds of political and societal groundswells. But I’m a complete sucker for any movie that tries, a curious example of which is the Richard Dreyfuss private-eye vehicle THE BIG FIX.

I read the Roger Simon’s novel some years back and I can’t recall much of it, I’m afraid. It’s one of the many jokey private detective novels or pastiches from the 70s and the hook this time is that our hero, Moses Wine, is a down-on-his-luck gumshoe as well as a one-time student activist from the 60s, which allows him entry into the world of former radicals in California. (The series of books has fitfully continued over the years, but these days Simon himself is an influential neo-con blogger.)

The plot concerns pot-smoking Moses, barely scraping by with gambling debts and child support payments, being hired to find out why flyers seemingly from an Abbie Hoffman-style radical provocateur, now underground, are being circulated in a bid to torpedo the California gubernatorial campaign of a milquetoast liberal candidate. Moses soon gets involved with an old flame, imprisoned student leaders, a Cesar Chavez-type as well as the cops and Feds who invariably plague the gumshoe in these yarns. The plot of this movie gets fairly complicated, but never convoluted – which is pretty remarkable as a lot of mileage is gotten out of characters we don't see, who people only talk about.



Coming off a string of blockbusters and a Best Actor Oscar, Dreyfuss was at the height of his unlikely superstardom, and all the ticks of his prime, the fast-talking and snorting self-righteousness, are on display. He comes across as a good bit more satisfied with himself than you’re likely to be. But while his performance may lack the charm of his work in JAWS or THE GOODBYE GIRL, the overall impact is tougher, really deep. His Moses isn’t entirely likable, but Dreyfuss makes the thawing of his cynicism, and the earlier exercises of it, compelling. And while he is a P.I. there’s no tough guy posturing, he gets shaken up and we see the toll any violence takes on him emotionally. There’s also a showy scene of him crying while watching archival footage of student activism that works marvelously. In fact, he stacks up a lot of terrific moments throughout the film. All told, he may come off as abrasive, even obnoxious – but you really root for the character and the actor’s ambitious take on him. The rest of the cast is all terrific and includes early turns by John Lithgow, F. Murray Abraham, Bonnie Bedilia, Ron Rifkin and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Mandy Patinkin.

I don’t think this movie was a hit when it came out, and I can kind of see why. It doesn’t have the cinematic depth of similar CA political satires like SHAMPOO or THE CANDIDATE or the neo-noir grit of THE LONG GOODBYE or NIGHT MOVES. That said, while this picture might not set the world on fire stylistically (it sometimes even resembles TV fare) its still a sly and very smart take on the characters and attitudes it portrays. For all Hollywood’s vaunted reputation as the epicenter left-wing American values (…yawn…) this is still one of the few mainstreams films that features political activists and where the characters lives include a dimension where they honestly talk and care about the world around them.

I also like that this picture is light-hearted, but essentially realistic, it doesn’t get bogged down in the referential-private-eye-genre-appreciation-society sweepstakes. Moses may don a fedora and act a little goofy in front of his kids, but there’s none of that wink-wink “remember THE MALTESE FALCON?” bullshit. And far from being a loner, Moses takes his kids along with him on stakeouts or even his Emma Goldmanesque elderly aunt. (And these kids never get cloying, by the way.) In keeping with the themes of the movie, Moses is part of something larger that he has to find his way back to, in the end he’s the opposite of the cynical outsider of the bygone age.

I can’t call THE BIG FIX a classic, but for lots of reasons I really love it. It isn’t perfect, but it’s so satisfying.