Sharky's Machine

I have the DVDs, though.

But no, mine is Sharky's Machine.

Sharky's machine.

I've heard of that.

He's a cop.

I'm happy to be here.

Uh, very excited about today's movie, actually.

Yes.

Yeah, this was a movie...

I wonder how the hell I haven't seen this before.

I bought this on a whim when Criterion released it on DVD years back, and I was like, Kiss Me Deadly, the thriller of tomorrow, because as usual, I'm, not to bemoan the 1950s, but it's not necessarily my favorite decade for movies.

It's funny 'cause this movie, I was just looking at the Wikipedia page, and apparently this movie was condemned by the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, which is another reason why I can't stand the 1950s, how they went after comics, and apparently this got thrown in with that, because it's good.

But that-

... who went on to be a superstar only a few months later.

Uh, her big breakthrough was a picture called, uh, Sharky's Machine, and, uh, that led to Against All Odds and...

But she was a, uh, I guess you would-

But the first movie after this, which was Steve Martin-

time.Yeah.

He had previously directed a 1981 neo-noir film called Sharky's Machine.

Right.

And that film had a very specific character-driven, gritty tone.

Like, it felt genuinely dangerous.

It really did.

So looking at the timeline, Reynolds was clearly trying to use Stick to recapture the lightning in a bottle he found with Sharky's Machine while simultaneously claiming his own piece of that highly lucrative 1980s Miami crime real estate.

And Elmore Leonard's 1983 novel Stick seemingly provided the perfect architectural blueprint for that exact ambition.

If Henry Silva was in this movie, you have no idea as much as I love Richard Jekyll in it.

I love Henry Silva so much when he shows up in Sharky's machine, like I could run through a wall.

I'm so excited.

I'm like, God damn it.