Der große Trick

When it was released in 1978, there was already a distance built into The Big Fix, based on a detective novel set in the ashes of the counterculture. The story had been commissioned by Rolling Stone magazine from Roger L. Simon, who wrote the script. On its release, the film was already drawing on images of the late 60s that had ceased to be memories but had already entered a misty mythology.

Richard Dreyfuss, fresh from the Spielberg hits (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) that had made him a star. not to mention his Academy Award for The Goodbye Girl), plays Moses Wine, aonetime rebel who has fallen on hardtimes. His wife, Bonnie Bedelia, has divorced him (though he dotes --rather tiresomely -- on his two sons), and he earns his keep as aprivate investigator when not smoking up and playing solitaire Clue in his -- there's no other word -- "pad."

Operatives of a political campaign sign him on to find out who is waging a dirty-tricks campaign to link their candidate to a legendary radical, now disappeared deep into the underground. The story has some interesting twists, particularly those involving Susan Anspach, John Lithgow and F. Murray Abraham, but the plot tends to disappear into holes here and there, as though told in a marijuana haze.

Viewed in the new millennium, The Big Fix unfolds behind two scrims of nostalgia: The one in the story itself, where 60s has-beens, unhappy with how the world has turned, yearn for barricades and love-ins; and the one revealed by the talents who made the movie, where that yearning for the heady days of the counterculture -- Berkeley! Vietnam! Hash brownies! -- has developed its own, peculiarly fusty period flavor.

This is the best movie Richard Dreyfus has been in. Corruption and dirty tricks in a senatorial campaign directed by John Lithgow, an Abbie Hoffman character played by F. Murray Abraham, not a little comedy and a heaping of social commentary a la 60's style make this a highly recommended movie. I hope it comes out on DVD soon.

This is not your usual detective story. It also is not your typical conspiracy political thriller either. So I understand if people have their issues with how the movie was made and with the pace it has. But if you like the craziness and down to earth performance by the cast (especially Richard Dreyfuss, Richard being a name that can has a nickname that might remind one of a slang word for detective - just as a side note) ... well you are on to a good start.

Talking of starts, the movie does start with our main character on a stakeout. And he acts a bit childish one might say ... not a wrong observation. While there adult themes and there is a real story to his broken wrist/hand, many things are utilized for the story or the characters purposes.

Not a masterpiece I reckon - but still a very well made movie to say the least. And tension filled from start to finish ... even if it feels a bit uneven.

The Big Fix is a mystery that does not answer every question that it raises, but it nails the Zeitgeist of the late 60's from a vantage point 10 years later. I have only seen it once, when it first came out and I have looked for it ever since.

The story is slow to develop with Moses Wine (Dreyfuss) having trouble with seemingly every aspect of his life. We learn that he feels displaced in time, and cannot get past the radical time in his life. I and many others have had those same feelings in the 35+ years since.

The sense of confusion and struggle fits exactly the feelings many of us experienced at the time. Taught to respect the police by our Greatest Generation parents, we often found that we were at the top of the police list of suspects for anything from subversion to bad manners and bad dress. The sense of alienation that I felt at the time permeates the viewing. I may have read too much of myself into it; if so, The Big Fix evoked it from my own life.

Best scenes without spoiling the story:

Leon Redbone's "I Wanna Be Seduced" while Moses gets ready for a date with Lila Shay (Anspach).

Moses at the TV station reviewing scenes of past demonstrations; the images are shown projected on his face. No real detail is visible except the tears on his cheeks. Powerful.

The reunion of old friends as they dance around the swimming pool of the house that was built by selling out the old radical values.

Finally, a sense of something incomplete at the end. The mystery solved, but every question not answered. How true to life!

****SOME SPOILERS*****Sharp and feisty movie about ex-1960's radical who's having a hard time making child support payments for his two kids. while trying to support himself as a small time private investigator in LA.

Moses Wine, Richard Dreyfuss, at home one night watching a football game that he bet on is contacted by an old flame back from his radical days in collage Lila, Susan Anspach. Lila wants Moses to work for a candidate for governor of California, Milles Hawthorne. Moses goes along with Lila to the Hawthorne campaign headquarters even though Moses is apposed to his policies as well as having a low opinion of Hawthorne's intellect. "This is a guy who thinks that Captain Kangaroo is too controversial" Moses tells Lila about the person she want's to get elected.

Told by Hawthorne's campaign manager Sam Sebastian, John Lithgow, that there's a flayer being distributed around the state with a doctored photo of Hawthorne and radical Howard Eppis, who's on the lamb from the police since he was convicted for inciting violence against the government. The phony flayer is telling everyone that Eppis is supporting Hawthorne for governor, which is not true, which will destroy Howthorne's chances for being elected and Sabastian want's Moses, a private eye, to find out who's disturbing it.

Moses and Lila go underground in the radical movement to find out who's behind these flayers and this whole Eppis mania. One night Moses goes over to Lila's home for a quite and uneventful dinner dinner and finds her murdered. Moses after overcoming the shock and grief of Lila's tragic death now has a more personal interest in the Hawthorne/Eppis case since he feels that Lila's murder was because of it.

Going on his own Moses starts to make inroads in his search for the elusive Howard Eppis and runs into people who in the past were supporters of Eppis who would now want to break Howard Eppis's neck. A group of radical Mexicans farm workers who's leader Louis Vasqaz, who had mysteriously vanished, felt that Eppis is a phony and an opportunist There's also the very wealthy industrialist Oscar Procari Sr. Fritz Weaver who holds Eppis responsible for his son's conviction for attempting to overthrow the government and flight from the law. This is due his involvement with Eppis in what was called the trial of the California Four.

Later Moses is picked up by the FBI and grilled by them about what he knows about Howard Eppis. It seems that everyone in the state of California wants to know where is Howard Eppis? It comes out later that someone that Moses came in contact with in the movie came up with an hair-brain scheme to blow up a section of the California freeway and blame in on Howard Eppis. This insane plan at the same time will destroy the Hawthorne campaign for governor by making it look like that Eppis was supporting him but who is it? and why was Lila murdered? did she stumble across something that if made public would blow the whole hair-brain scheme?

Richard Dreyfuss was never better then he was in "The Big Fix" With a wonderful supporting cast that carried the story from it's delightful and funny beginning to it's tense and griping final conclusion. And speaking of casts it was hilarious how Moses who was wearing a cast on his right hand, during the entire movie, came up with different reasons when anyone asked him how he broke his hand according to what their political or moral positions were.