#21: Amos & Andrew (1993)

My name is Ed and twice a week I watch a Nicolas Cage film and then play the lottery using numbers inspired by that film. And so the long tedious years before death pass marginally less slowly.

According to my spreadsheet of Nicolas Cage films I am now over a quarter of the way there!

Did you know that liberals can be racist too?

THE NUMBERS

1 — Tollman, the dodgy police chief,

Only joking! LOL! Here is my actual review:

Amos & Andrew’s title references Amos ’n’ Andy, a hugely popular radio and TV sitcom that ran from the 1920s to the 1960s that became fairly controversial because despite being set in Harlem, it was created, written and performed by white blokes (albeit that they did recast for the TV version). This has nothing directly to do with the film — but it does vaguely allude to the film’s themes.

Andrew is Samuel L Jackson, a wealthy playwright who’s decided to move a dead posh island in New England. His liberal elite neighbours assume he’s a burglar, because they are racists, and call the police, who are also racists, and surround the house after further misunderstandings lead them to believe there’s a hostage situation. When the chief of police figures out what’s happened he decides to evade responsibility by making a deal with recently arrested low-life Amos (Nicolas Cage). If Amos pretends to hold Andrew hostage, thus giving a ‘reason’ for the cops to have been there in the first place, they’ll let him go. Which almost works until Amos figures out that he might as well actually hold Andrew hostage and ask for some money while he’s at it, whilst Andrew refuses to be rescued because the police are such racist pricks.

Phew.

There’s almost something in it, but it doesn’t quite work. The patronising, ‘Ah, but isn’t everyone in this situation a little bit in the wrong?’ tone undercuts the whole thing: particularly rubbish is a sub-plot where an African-American priest leads an angry, torch-waving mob onto the island, which just sort of peters out after they accidentally set fire to Andrew’s house.

It’s underwritten — everyone constantly jumping to the wrong conclusion is obviously how farce works, but there’s never a sense of why any of this is happening, why these people would behave like this. As the film goes on we’re supposed to believe that Amos and Andrew are buddies now, but it never relies bothers to join the dots on that — Amos never displays any particularly redeeming features that he, or we, could warm to.

It’s a shame, as the cast themselves all pitch what little is there exactly right — special award to the always-great Brad Dourif who turns up as a particularly dimwitted cop. But underneath it all there’s not much of script.

THE NUMBERS

1 — Tollman, the dodgy police chief, tells a reporter that he can “fuck the 1st amendment”.

4 — Amos has a very classy tattoo which reads “4 Play”. I think it is about sex.

7 — Mr Gillman, Andrew’s neighbour, is a lawyer — at one point he mentions that he defended the Chicago Seven, a group of protestors who were charged with federal crimes after a riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention. SEE HE THINKS HE’S A LIBERAL BUT IT TURNS OU

18 — Among Amos’s previous crimes is “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” . He claims that “she looked 18”. He later hits on a 17-year-old. And yet I don’t think we’re supposed to actually really dislike this character?

39 — At one point Mr Gillman offers Amos his priceless baseball card collection, which includes a Ted Williams card from Williams’ rookie year, 1939. Fun fact: Ted Williams’ body is held in cryogenic suspension so one day he will be revived to play space baseball (or he would if cryogenics wasn’t a crock run by the crooked and delusional).

49 — The Gillmans’ house is at 49 Old Country Road.

THE RESULT

The lottery is stupid. Don’t play the lottery. I have played it 21 times and not even won it once.

I hate the lottery.

NEXT TIME ON NICOLAS CAGE:

Deadfall. Not that one. Or the other one. The one directed by Nic Cage’s brother.