Sharky’s Machine

In 1981, Burt Reynolds was approaching the end of the most significant decade of his career. It began in 1972 with the release of Deliverance, in which Reynolds played a straight role, one of the two most important roles in the film. It was a role that many thought could be his breakthrough into film—previously he had been mostly a television actor. Numerous films followed Deliverance, such as White Lightening (1973), W. W. and the Dixie Dance Kings (1974), At Long Last Love (1975), Gator (1975), Semi-Tough (1977), Hooper (1978), The End (1978), and of course Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and its first sequel (1980). In these films we see Reynolds in a number of roles--as an action hero, a comedian, a romantic lead, even a musical star. But the roles for which he is best known are those in which he plays a boisterous comic Southern prankster—a fool-killer with a moralistic desire to upend corrupt authority and in general to run amuck. Reynolds has been trying to live down this persona, and at the same time to take advantage of it, for much of the rest of his career. He's shown an impressive flexibility in the kinds of roles he is willing to take, and at the same time a resilient energy that led to the renovation of his career beginning with Boogie Nights and more recent films. He's even been willing to parody roles that made him famous—see Without a Paddle (2004) and The Dukes of Hazzard (2005). Although everyone knows his name, he did not ever become the great actor and star he aspired to become—there is a difference, of course, between acting and being a star. Reynolds was a competent actor and for a time a big-name star but in neither case a name for the ages.

Sharky's Machine (1981) may be the film in which Reynolds sought to alter the stakes of his career. Not only does he play a big city detective, but he also directs the film, based on the novel of the same title by Georgia writer William Diehl. I haven't read the novel and so cannot consider the film in relation to its source. The film on its own grounds is a mess, wavering back and forth between gritty police drama, character study, and romantic potboiler. Demoted to the vice squad at the beginning of the film because of a shooting that killed a civilian—Sharky is a highly skilled detective who wants to redeem himself and who is naturally disposed to rebel against authority. He and other members of the vice squad (all of them suffer from an inferiority complex because the vice squad is the least desirable assignment for a police officer) become involved in investigating a high-class prostitute who is murdered before their eyes. She is having an affair with a candidate for governor, and also with an Italian crime boss (played by Vittorio Gassman) who controls the city's power structure, and much of the police station. The plot grows increasingly dense and complex, and the film is not up to the complexity. There is a moment in the film when two Ninja assassins attack a police informant—you know at this moment that the film is floundering. Ninja assassins have little to do with the rest of the film--except for a final encounter with Sharky on a boat in the middle of (presumably) Lake Lanier. Ultimately, as Gassman's hitman brother kills off Sharky's colleagues, the film resolves all these complexities by transmogrifying into a film about Sharky's love for (some might say voyeuristic obsession with) the high-class prostitute apparently killed before his eyes.

The film has the quality of a 1970s era TV crime drama. Kojak comes specifically to mind. The cast includes actors who often appeared in such dramas (Charles Durning, Earl Holliman, Henry Silva, Brian Keith).

Sharky's Machine is set in Atlanta. Reynold's choice of this film based on a Georgia book, the name of his production company (Deliverance Productions), and his use of Atlanta seems a deliberate effort to capitalize on his regional connections. Oddly, the film seems almost a deliberate attempt to reconceive Atlanta as a big national city with no regional distinctiveness. There is, of course, no reason why a film would need to adhere to preconceptions about how a regional city should be portrayed. What the film does for the most part is treat Atlanta as if it is just another version of Chicago or New York or Los Angeles. The music is decidedly non-regional—the brassy sort of music you would expect to hear in a film set on the strip of Las Vegas. Few characters speak with Southern accents, and the few who do are glaring, almost awkward exceptions. Reynolds himself underplays his accent—it's hardly apparent. One reason may be that many of the characters in the film may have moved to Atlanta from somewhere else. Even in 1981 Atlanta was beginning to take on its current character as a city of national and international dimensions (hence the Ninja assassins), but few people in 1981 would have thought of the city in that way, though many complained that it was losing, or had lost, its regional character. A few scenes are specifically tied to Atlanta—one in a night club where a blues band is playing (Atlanta is not known as a center of the blues, but at least the scene ties the film to the South), another set in the infield of Atlanta Stadium, where the Braves play. For the most part, Atlanta is presented as simply another big American city. The film as a whole is bland and without distinctive character. This may be a result of the director's failure to take advantage of the regional aspects of the city where the story takes place—doing so would at least have given the film a sense of place and a specific geographical identity. It might also have helped to emphasize what may be a theme of the film, with its Italian henchmen and Ninja assassins and police officers and bad men who seem to come from all over the nation—that the world is coming to Atlanta and one thing the world brings with it is big-time crime and corruption. (This is not to suggest that Atlanta did not already have enough crime and corruption of its own).

In 1982, Reynolds starred with Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. It marked, in my mind, the end of his great decade. The South that provided the location for his most successful films had lost its commercial and cultural appeal (Ronald Reagan had whipped Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential elections), and Reynolds had demonstrated the extent and limits of his talents. He was at his best as the Southern prankster and good ol' boy, and neither Hollywood nor (apparently) Reynolds himself was interested in further incarnations of that role. The nation moved forward. Better romantic character actors made their way onto the scene, and Reynolds as a comic hero was no longer fashionable—a later generation of comedians replaced him. He would struggle for another fifteen years until appearances in such films as Boogie Nights (1997) and Mystery, Alaska (1999) brought about a resurrection of his career, though probably on the basis of terms he would not have chosen for himself.