I just watched Miami Blues last week. I really liked it a lot. It’s a crime comedy from 1990, directed by George Armitage, in which Alec Baldwin plays a con man who goes around impersonating a cop, busting crimes so he can steal from robbers, as well as killing people, and seemingly just running into one crime after another. He was really funny in playing the absurdity of a guy just winging it on his hustling skills with no plan ahead of him.
Jennifer Jason Leigh played his hooker girlfriend, and played her with a sweet optimism and a charming Southern accent, just wanting to live a straight life and to be normal. It was a nice difference to see Leigh play a more comic character that wasn’t jaded by life or having a twisted dark side, she seemed to really dig into playing this sweet young woman who had a very matter-of-fact attitude about her career as a sex worker while wanting to improve her life through college courses and move on.
And Fred Ward as the cop trailing Baldwin had this salt of the earth grit to him that I liked, seemingly more like a regular person than a movie star. There was a running joke of him with his false teeth that never got old to me, his character had a warm sense of humor about it that made me enjoy following him a lot.
I liked how the film had these warm Florida colors of pink and light green that really evoked the heat of Miami. And it was a nice touch that the camera would switch from stationary to handheld whenever there was an action scene, with wider closeups and a looseness to capture the unpredictability of a crime in action. It made me think of Wong Kar-Wai’s later work with Fallen Angels, with his use of wide-angle handheld shots to capture the absurdity of everyday life in the underbelly of Hong Kong.
This was just an odd and fun film to watch, and I really enjoyed it.
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