First time producer Fouad Said, a former cameraman who worked on a number of episodes of the "I Spy" TV series (1965-68), joined forces with erstwhile associates Bill Cosby and Robert Culp to make 'Hickey & Boggs', a crime thriller written by neophyte screenwriter (later director-producer) Walter Hill ('48 Hours'). Viewers expecting a feature-length episode of "I Spy" were in for a surprise. The TV series was cool and jaunty: "Man from U.N.C.L.E." for hipsters. 'Hickey & Boggs' is grim, gritty, and downbeat with Cosby and Culp deliberately working against their glamorous TV star personae by playing Al Hickey and Frank Boggs as two world-weary, down-at-the-heels private investigators facing the moral wasteland of contemporary Los Angeles with a growing sense of powerlessness and despair. In its heyday (c.1940–1957), film noir typically espoused a bleak view of human nature and modern society but sometimes held out the possibility of the hero's redemption through honor and heroism. By the early Seventies such romantic notions of individual agency seemed quaint if not deluded. Accordingly, the movie's complicated plot, involving stolen money from a bank heist, vengeful mobsters, no-nonsense cops, and volatile revolutionaries, soon expands beyond the ability of the protagonists to control it, or even affect the situation to any discernible degree. After surviving an apocalyptic showdown, Hickey complains to Boggs: "Nobody came, nobody cares. It's still not about anything." Enfeebled by a world of intrigue that renders them mere adjuncts to the action, Hickey and Boggs are further emasculated in the war of the sexes. Neither is able to sustain a marriage, or even a healthy relationship. Hickey is to blame when his estranged wife, Nyona (Rosalind Cash) is murdered by the mob. Boggs, an alcoholic, frequents a bar where his ex- wife, Edith (Sheila Sullivan; Culp's actual wife at the time), works as a stripper and taunts him from the stage while revealing her assets. Cynical and nihilistic in the extreme, 'Hickey & Boggs' did poor box office; even by the pessimistic standards of its time, it was a bummer. Also featured is James Woods in an early film role. VHS (2003) and DVD (2004).
Review of Hickey & Boggs
