Street Smart - The Crooked Journalist As Hero

Mar

4

Street Smart - The Crooked Journalist As Hero

≡ Category: Drama, Highly Recommended, Movie Reviews, United States |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Drama
Director: Jerry Schatzberg
Year: 1987

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE

The best reason to see 1987’s Street Smart is Morgan Freeman’s breakout performance as Times Square pimp Fast Black, but it’s far from the only one.

Christopher Reeve stars as Jonathan Fisher, a morally weak reporter for a news magazine who is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. He fancies himself a serious reporter, but is stuck doing fashion pieces and obituaries, which Fisher believes are beneath his talents. About to lose his job, he hits on the idea of faking a lifestyle story about a Times Square pimp, who he imaginatively names Leroy (the first name that comes to mind for a certain type of white person).

Soon enough, Fisher is the toast of the town, even landing a side gig as the lead anchorman for a consumer protection gotcha TV program called Street Smart, which exposes corruption scams on the streets of NYC.

But there’s trouble in paradise. District Attorney Leonard Pike (Jay Patterson) is convinced that Fisher is writing about the very real pimp Fast Black, who’s facing a 2nd degree murder rap, and demands Fisher’s notes. In a roundabout way, that gets Fast Black on Fisher’s case, which is not the place to be.

How unusual and innovative to make your hero morally weak! For a film geek like me, it provides interest because it’s definitely a fresh way to tell a story, but for some people, making the hero less than sympathetic will be a turnoff.

And let’s face it: Jonathan Fisher has simply appalling judgement. At one point, even though he has a hot girlfriend (Mimi Rogers), he lets himself be talked into having unprotected sex with Punchy (Kathy Baker), one of Fast Black’s hookers. At the height of the AIDS crisis!

Speaking of Kathy Baker — she’s almost as convincing as Morgan Freeman. In a role that could have been one-dimensional, Baker painstakenly constructs a flesh and blood human being and makes it look easy. Baker is not playing a very bright person, but she doesn’t fall into the trap of condescending to Punchy. She shows Punchy’s envy of Fisher’s Harvard education and her lack of self esteem in her awe of anyone who has attained such heights. You see her essentially kind nature, and the sort of fragile bravado she uses to protect herself from her own fear.

Her duet with Morgan Freeman in a scene in which Fast Black threatens to take a “piece for myself” was one of the best scenes of 1987 and arguably should have won Baker the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for that year. (She did win Best Supporting Actress from the Boston Society of Film Critics.)

And then there’s Morgan Freeman, in the role that put him on everyone’s casting list in Hollywood. Fast Black is a towering achievement. This is not the usual Hollywood villain. Freeman plays Fast Black as an entrepreneur, whose commodity just happens to be pussy. In a scene in which a john is beating one of his prostitutes, Fast Black’s customer service skills would make Walmart proud, right up to the point where he kicks the man in the face. But, as ruthless as Fast Black is, he’s not monolithically vicious. His main woman backtalks him and poor Fast Black looks helpless. Her turns to Christopher Reeve and shrugs. “What can you do?”

Morgan Freeman was robbed in the Academy Awards. Sean Connery won that year for his hambone performance in The Untouchables, proving that the Academy is often all about sentimentality instead of acting.

Christopher Reeve, the putative star of the piece, looks relatively shallow when placed alongside such superlative acting. Part of that is due to the shallow nature of the Jonathan Fisher role, but not all. There is a whiff of artificiality about Reeve’s performance which makes Fisher not quite believable. Granted, the script by David Freeman doesn’t help Reeve. It’s hard to believe that a veteran reporter would be so naive and reckless.

But I shouldn’t put down screenwriter David Freeman too much. He has crafted a scenario which is very entertaining, steadily ratchets up the dramatic tension, and resolves itself in a crafty and satisfying way. I also appreciate that David Freeman doesn’t overrely on profanity, which lazy screenwriters often do when they’re writing parts for black people or street-level characters in general. Fast Black uses language the way you would expect an intelligent, uneducated person to do. David Freeman also has an excellent ear for the language of the overpriviledged, as demonstrated by his characterization of Ted Avery (a spot-on and very funny Andre Gregory), Jonathan Fisher’s editor.

If I haven’t yet mentioned Jerry Schatzberg yet, the director of Street Smart, it’s for good reason. His work is workmanlike, all but anonymous. In a movie so heavily dependent on character for it’s effectiveness, that’s not really a problem as long as Schatzberg doesn’t actively impede the performances of his actors, and he doesn’t.

I do have one minor complaint about Street Smart. Considering that the then decadent aura of New York City is so important to the story, you seldom feel like you’re actually in New York. I suspect that, except for a few establishing shots, Street Smart was shot in some place like Toronto. I was consoled a little bit by the tasty score by Robert Irving III and Miles Davis, which provided some sorely needed funk to the street scenes.

Still, Street Smart is a briskly entertaining couple of hours in front of your TV, with the bonus of some world classic acting from Morgan Freeman and Kathy Baker.