April 20, 1990 | Miami Blues is a bracingly potent brew of ferociously funny black comedy and gritty-as-gravel cop-and-killer thriller. Don’t be misled by the whimsical tone of the advertising campaign, which promises fun and games of a lighter, brighter sort. This is one sneaky, shifty movie, with quicksilver shifts in mood and a fearless penchant for merging brutality and hilarity, sometimes within a single scene.
Written and directed with energetic wit by George Armitage, a former protege of B-movie mogul Roger Corman, Miami Blues is at heart the story of a young man’s yearning for the good things in life: a loving, supportive wife; a fulfilling and financially rewarding job; and a comfortable little house in the suburbs. What makes this particular version of the story special is, the young man is a charming sociopath, the wife is a chipper prostitute who’s working her way through business school, and the guy’s job entails robbing pickpockets in shopping malls. The furnished house is rented and appears to be in a nice neighborhood.
Junior Frenger (Alec Baldwin) arrives in Miami shortly after his release from San Quentin, with stolen credit cards in his pocket and at least one murder to his credit. He ups the body count before he even leaves the airport: When a Hare Krishna accosts him, Junior casually breaks the poor man’s fingers, then walks away. He doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care, that the Krishna falls to the ground, writhes in pain, then dies of shock.
Comfortably established under an assumed name in a posh Miami hotel, Junior sends out for a hooker. Enter Susie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), alias Pepper, a sweetly dim but ambitious cracker from Okeechobee. Susie is surprisingly modest at first, asking Junior to look the other way as she tries on a new dress. But when it’s time for business, she readily strips for action. For Junior, it’s love at first sight. Same thing for Susie, for different reasons: Any man who doesn’t beat her, and eats her home cooking, is a joy to treasure.
Junior describes himself as a kind of Robin Hood, “except that I don’t give the money to the poor.” He wants to settle down with Susie, to rely on her keeping house and cooking meals while he goes out to do a good day’s — or an even better night’s — work. Susie, blissfully oblivious to Junior’s traces of bug-eyed psychosis, gratefully accepts his offer of a common-law marriage. She even agrees to quit working.
It’s a simple life — day work at the mall, home life with Susie — yet a rewarding one. But then along comes Hoke Moseley (Fred Ward), a grizzled police detective who can spot an ex-con from a mile away. Moseley figures Junior for the Krishna’s killer as soon as he meets him, but delays making an arrest until he can obtain more evidence. This is a big mistake: Junior tracks Moseley to the detective’s fleabag hotel room, beats him unconscious, and steals his gun, badge and — the unkindest cut of all! — false teeth. Worse, Junior uses Moseley’s I.D. and service revolver to rob bookies and drug dealers.
Unfortunately for Junior, he begins to enjoy playing policeman, and gets more than he bargains for when he tries to stop other people’s crimes. Unfortunately for Moseley, he takes a long time to recover from his beating, and an even longer time to accustom himself to a new set of dentures. And unfortunately for Susie, she she’s troubled by fears that, what with Junior returning to his life of crime, their trial marriage is in deep trouble.
With its subversively satirical take on the middle-class American Dream, Miami Blues percolates with dark, daffy humor as it prowls the mean streets and bright malls of Miami. But Armitage goes one risky step further by occasionally making the laughter catch in your throat. The violent moments are brief, but viciously intense — they leave you slack-jawed and gasping, because they seem to spring up from out of nowhere. (A natural response: “What the hell was that ?!”) What’s true of Alec Baldwin’s brave, bravura performance as Junior can be said of the entire movie: Beneath the seductively engaging surface lies a tripwire potential for savagery.
Based on one of a series of Hoke Moseley novels by the late Charles Willeford, Miami Blues brings out the best in its three leads. Baldwin, fresh from The Hunt for Red October, is sensationally effective — he’s equal measures Prince Charming and Travis Bickle, complete with a talking-to-myself riff highly reminiscent of Taxi Driver. As Hoke, Fred Ward, who co-produced the film, reinvigorates the stereotype of the hard-boiled, burnt-out cop with a performance of full-bodied sincerity. And Jennifer Jason Leigh winningly plays Susie as a sexy, sweet-natured fallen angel for whom happiness is loving a good man and owning a Burger World franchise. She, too, subscribes to the American Dream. And even her experiences with Junior aren’t enough to make her cancel her subscription.
