Question: Is there anyone cooler than Michael Caine? Answer: No.
NOTE: Netflix is taking down a boatload of titles on May 1st, so I thought it might be fun to see how many I can watch in the next two weeks, and then post quick, little hit-and-run reviews here. Hope you enjoy, and if you want to see any of these movies and have Netflix, better watch ’em now!
Considering their previous outing resulted in Get Carter (aka the Best British Crime Movie Ever Made), I was greatly anticipating director Mike Hodges and Michael Caine’s follow-up. Pulp is about as different from Get Carter as it gets, but the style and attitude are there all the same. Caine plays Mickey King, a writer of pulp fiction and seedy crime stories who is hired by a former movie star (played by Mickey Rooney) to ghostwrite his autobiography. Everything goes swimmingly until the movie star is murdered, and King finds himself in what could be the plot of one of his novels - playing detective in a real-life mystery. The first thing apparent about the film is it’s humor, which is pitch-black and unrelenting. It’s as hard-boiled as they come, but not above sending up the detective-story tropes that made the genre famous. Caine is his usual awesome self, changed a bit here as a normal man in over his head trying to play the role of tough guy (which he‘s ill-suited for). Mickey Rooney and Lionel Stander have a lot of fun with their parts, and the film has a place in film noir history alone as being the last of the most prolific of femme fatales, Lizabeth Scott.
Also, I did a double-take at the end when none other than Humphrey Bogart shows up and puts the final nail in King’s coffin. Okay, so it’s actually not Bogie, but rather actor Robert Sacchi, who has made a living playing Bogart-like characters (or the man himself) in various roles throughout the years. The resemblance is so uncanny I had to double-check IMDB to make sure Bogie was dead by the time this film was made.
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