Peeper

1975's PEEPER opens with promise....a guy who sounds like Humphrey Bogart, face obscured by the shadows of an alley, recites the film's credits.  I can't recall another movie doing that. Then we're informed that we're in Los Angeles, 1947.  We hear the lovely brogue of Michael Caine in voiceover explaining that he is Leslie C. Tucker, private investigator.  The streets and cars look authentic. It's nighttime.  Tucker's office is illuminated only by desk lamp.  A disheveled guy named Anglich (Michael Constantine) arrives with old photos of his missing daughter.  Er, one he hasn't seen in thirty years.  He did go off and leave her, uh...

So far, so good.  The stage is set for a nice bit of nostalgia for 1940s noir.  But then it becomes clear fairly quickly that PEEPER will be an also ran, a nice try that peters out despite handsome production design.  It's the script by W.D. Richter, who would go to pen such diverse movies as BRUBAKER and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA and direct THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI.  It's muddled, a mess.  And not even an interesting mess.  The old gumshoe flicks had complex plots that sometimes made little sense, but the characters were colorful and the entanglements intriguing.  And they were directed with pop and zing.  Peter Hyams (BUSTING, 2010, RUNNING SCARED) is a talented director, and his work here is always visually pleasing (along with Earl Rath's cinematography), but somehow he doesn't make this picture sing.  It's just too mild, too low stakes. Flat.  Bland.

This too despite a choice cast.  Caine is always worth watching, even in crap movies (kinda like Gene Hackman). Having the fish out of water scenario is a good idea and the actor carries himself well, but he is repeatedly defeated by the overall ennui of the screenplay.  This also despite some witty and snappy dialogue he trades with the other actors, including Natalie Wood, Kitty Winn, and that great old heavy, Timothy Carey.  The plot is old hat kidnapping and extortion, with some CHINATOWN (out the previous year) thrown in.  Wood, who had been absent from the screen for several years, is as sexy as ever, but she is woefully underused.  She won't make you forget Barbara Stanwyck.  Winn, in one of her too few roles, fares even worse.

I love detective dramas, all smoke and fedoras, and I love all the elements of PEEPER, one of several '70s films attempting to send up/pay homage to yesterday private dick stories, but somehow everyone had an off day here.