Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Not convincingly performed, with a hell of a dramatic climax in that warehouse, which is the bit that this movie is mainly remembered for. Yes, I saw it decades ago, and tonight, on DVD. And what was good back then, now just seem ludicrous. But I'm [email protected] and not here to discuss the action parts.Alexandra Paul must have been desperate for an acting job. Gee, she plays somebody whom lieutenant Stephanie Holden of BAYWATCH fame would have loved to set straight. Hey, full-frontal nudity as 'the streetlights makes her pubic hair glow'... She does seem utterly, utterly miscast... This might be because of this hindsight.But the main reason to watch glamor-wise is (cue the Toto song here: Ali I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes, Rosanna, Rosanna): Lady Rosanna Arquette. And although the script literally has yucky moments, once she is thrown into the shower and the unnecessary makeup is washed off, wow, dudes! What a stunner!I've cheered for this actress during the Eighties. She wasn't in successful big hit movies, real success eluded her, and I saw all that potential going to waste. Here's a good one though, to remember her by. That scene where she's clearly naked under the bedsheets, oh wow dudes! MY HEART PUMPS CUSTARD FOR HER, to coin a phrase.To the prudes reading this: I'm just an old boy. If you saw this movie when it was on the cinema circuit, and you're waffling on about it almost 30 years later, of course you have to be an Old Boy. And Old Boys appreciate pretty girls. And get kinda silly drooling. Sigh.If you're not into seeing these two actresses, and just want action action action this might not really be the movie for you. Lots of the action scenes are seriously flawed. Hell, he's out of work, ruins his car, yet it just stays roadworthy in the next scenes. And why don't the baddies just shoot him down in that stand-off scene?Five stars go to Rosanna Arquette, the other star is for that glorious Clint Eastwood-y moment when Scudder fires his gun after coming to Sarah's rescue. Cinematic perfection!

Actually, a minor but diverting film about marginally alcoholic ex-cop Jeff Bridges, now a private investigator, who is hired by hooker Alexandra Paul to protect her. He fails. She dies.He spends the rest of the film tracking down her killers with the reluctant help of Paul's pimp, Randy Brooks, and one of Paul's stable mates, Roseanna Arquette. He soon links the killing to Latino drug boss Andy Garcia, who killed Paul in an attempt to protect his means of smuggling cocaine into the country. The plot's a bit complicated but that's about all you need to know, going in.Bridges is an interesting actor. He usually brings something extra to each of his roles, but here, with his dark mustache and the chronic temptation to booze it up again, he seems to hold back. Not that he does a poor job, just that he's been more inventive in other roles.Alexandra Paul doesn't last long. Too bad because there's an engaging scene in which she gets stoned on coke and examines her pudendum in the light from a refrigerator. She's not a bravura actress. Neither is Roseanna Arquette, with her little-girl's voice, but Arquette exhibits some over-sized features of face and figure. She has a bosom with authority, for one thing, and large lips and incisors that are at the same time inviting and frightening. Andy Garcia is always a presence on screen. He's terribly slick. But Randy Brooks as the pimp is stuck with a one-dimensional part. There are several subordinate thugs and assorted goons who are mainly around to gin up the body count.Hal Ashby has directed some interesting stuff before, but here he allows -- or seems to allow -- his actors to improvise long talky scenes, mainly arguments. Garcia really picks up the ball and runs with it. Everybody is addressed as "man" or "baby." Sometimes the calumny reaches majestic proportions just before it all explodes. At other time, like near a stadium or in Garcia's flamboyant, Gaudi-designed house, it leads only to anti-climax. The final shoot out in an unusual location is de rigueur.It's not insulting. Nothing blows up, No heads are wrenched off. Blood is minimal. It's absorbing in its own way since it pretends to be nothing more than what it is -- no "Chinatown," just another routine private-eye thriller.

Though far from perfect, this film has enough little gems, to save it. The acting overcomes everything else, and a scene outside of the LA Coliseum between Jeff Bridges and a young Andy Garcia still makes me smile. Compare and contrast this film to "To Live and Die in LA" and you will see why we think Hal Ashby is our generations Howard Hawks. Of course Hawks was greater, but these days, so little stacks up with anything classic, that we can be forgiven for elevating our few originals like Ashby. Jeff Bridges is a movie star, and here he uses his gifts to pull this film from the 80's swamp. If I'm wrong about this film I apologize, but this is in my collection of 23 DVD's for a reason. From the architect "Gaudi" to truly GREAT henchmen, "8 Million ways To Die" is a VERY lovable flawed gem. In my other reviews, I would guarantee my taste. Here I am too much in love with this film to be a good jury member. I like this film, shame on me!

Hal Ashby being sacked explains a lot; so does the disappearance of Oliver Stone. You can imagine how much tougher and seedier it would have been in Stone's hands. But Ashby, it would seem, tightened up and found his movie in the editing room, as this movie is not quite there. There is a curious lack of incidental music, except when it isn't needed, and what is there tends to foreshadow action. Scudder's initial descent into alcoholism is almost skipped over; you suspect that Stone or Ashby, given half the chance, would have added some detail to the descent. Instead of which Scudder's wife suddenly disappears, he's on his own. Perhaps you can explain this by saying 'blackout' but I think it's an error. The movie is realistically slow, treating the characters as real people, which is perhaps a mistake for the genre. There isn't much action until the very end, and the couple of bits during the film are followed by Scudder blacking out, so we don't get him dealing with the aftermath of these violent events. This is one of the few Block/Scudder novels i haven't read, so I can't comment on how similar to the book it is. My guess would be very, since Block tends to go in for very violent climaxes preceded by Scudder wondering if he'll hit the bottle again. Falls nicely into the Jeff Bridges B-movie crime genre which the Coens picked up on with The Big Lebowski.