Movie Review: Mikey and Nicky

        

        If you like your coffee black and your scotch straight up and don’t believe anything good will ever come out of life, this movie is for you. Taut, dark and foreboding, think Goodfellas without the jukebox hits being piped into the background and, instead of The Hawaiian Cottage filled with mafia wannabes wearing dapper shirts, the impetuous violence takes place in a cheap 24/7 coffee shop that refuses to hand out complimentary cream. It is all mob lore from the bottom of the food chain. 

        The premise of the movie is never outwardly stated but can be figured out very quickly. Nicky played John Cassavetes is a loser of the first order who, for unknown reasons, has run afoul of the Philadelphia mob and is on the lam for his life. Peter Falk as Mikey is his supposed best friend who pretends to be trying to save him but is in reality doing double duty as an advance scout for the hit man played brilliantly by Ned Beatty. All the players have no redeeming social virtues. 

        Thus we start out with Cassavetes hiding out in a sleazy hotel room in South Philly. He is on the verge of suicide, sensing full well that his time is up. Falk tracks him down.   There the cat and mouse game begins. Falk is helping Cassavates elude Beatty but in reality is keeping in phone contact with him but manages to keep one step ahead of Beatty by misleading him. Remember, this is all pre-cell phones when one had to find a pay phone and keep track that way. Almost impossible but very convenient if you are trying to keep 30 minutes between you and your target. 

        The “window dressing” is excellent: cheap bars and luncheonettes, big, old, oversized Cadillacs, cheap perfume infested hotels that are nothing more than temporary shack ups for drunkards, addicts, and low rent whores and their clientele. The streets are dark and barren.

After all, what decent person would be roaming the streets of a working class Philadelphia industrial area at this time of night? To really appreciate the flavor of the movie, one has to examine Beatty character. A purported hit man. Not! Instead of a Luca Brasi lookalike or someone who walked out of a Graham Greene novel, we get Beatty as Kinney.

He represents all that was bad about the 1970’s: bad hair, even worse clothes, and a personality that was custom made for the era: a middle aged, overweight divorcee, who looks like he has spent one too many nights in a cheater’s bar trying to pick up sexually deprived women of his ilk. All without success of course! 

        As Mikey and Nicky stumble their way around town, they visit a neighborhood prostitute, played to almost perfection by Carol Grace. She is vulnerable, having been used and abused by every low life in the neighborhood. Her face has fear and loathing of men written all over it. Whatever beauty she once had has long been drained from her and her eyes reflect it. In other words, life for her, as with every other character, is an inevitable road to disaster. 

        For sheer foreshadowing of the unsubtle variety, we have our two protagonists riding a bus on their way to visit Nicky’s mother’s grave. They discuss life and death in a banal way, which is the only way they know how.

Of course, the graveyard is life’s last destination. Another honorable mention about an F word that was not thrown around: family. Well, Nicky, after having it out with Mikey, Nicky attempts to force his way into his estrange wife’s house. Fearing him as much as loving him, she reluctantly lets him in. Good sense grabs her by the ankles, and out goes Nicky. 

        His last stop? Mikey’s house, a surprisingly well-maintained house in a posh section of Philadelphia. There we meet Mikey’s wife, Annie, played by Rose Arrick. After Mikey gets home, Nicky knocks on the door and Rose, knowing what is coming and following Mikey’s orders, refuses to let him in. Beatty is a block away. 

        Then, there is light! Sunshine! Odd, until this point I thought the movie was in black and white but color it was. The next minute is predictable: Nicky gets gunned down in the style of February 14, 1929. THE END. 

        Recommendation: A definite thumbs up. The interaction between Falk and Cassavetes is superb. Not a wasted scene. As a footnote, Elaine May directed the movie. It still is a rarity to have a female film director.