'80s Roulette: BLUE CITY

I have (almost) every single movie released in theaters
in the ‘80s in the United States on a hard drive,
and once a week, I’m going to hit shuffle and review whatever film comes up first.

Welcome to ‘80s Roulette!

MAY 2, 1986

Blue City
Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, David Caruso, Paul Winfield, Scott Wilson, Anita Morris, Luis Contreras, Julie Carmen, Allan Graf, Hank Stone, Tom Lister Jr., Rex Ryon, Felix Nelson, Willard E. Pugh, Sam Whipple, David L. Crowley, Paddi Edwards, John H. Evans, Lincoln Simonds, Ken Lloyd, Vaughn Tyree Jelks, Roxanne Tunis, Roberto Contreras, Carla Olson, Tom Junior Morgan, Phil Seymour, Joe Read, George Collins
cinematography by Steven Poster
music by Ry Cooder
screenplay by Lukas Heller & Walter Hill
based on the novel by Ross Macdonald
produced by William Hayward and Walter Hill
directed by Michelle Manning
Rated R
1 hr 23 mins

A young man returns to his hometown and learns his father, the mayor was murdered, which leads him to investigate.

Not a lot of Florida in your Florida movie, there, folks.

The idea of Walter Hill writing an adaptation of a Ross Macdonald novel had me excited before I threw this one on. I know this played at the theater I worked at in 1986, but I’m pretty sure I never bothered to see it. I wish I could report that Blue City is a neglected gem, but pretty much nothing about this one works, especially compared to the source material. The book is set in an unnamed city somewhere in the Midwest, and it feels very intentional. It shouldn’t be a big city, but it’s also not an anonymous little town. It was an early effort by Macdonald, whose Lew Archer novels are some of my favorite mysteries ever. He didn’t write whodunits, per se, but his books were tightly plotted and acutely observed. He wrote about the false faces people wore and what it looked like when those masks slipped, and Lew Archer was a great character to serve as the guide through the various mysteries that Macdonald constructed. I read a delightful adaptation of The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Joel and Ethan Coen, and I know they also wrote an adaptation of Black Money, and I’d love to read that one, too. I love the Paul Newman films where he played Archer. In general, I think Macdonald is an under-utilized asset that Hollywood should reconsider.