Grace Quigley

The best two scenes in the film in my view are where Katherine Hepburn is standing up for herself in the face of scoundrels. The first, a mean spirited landlord and the second, a sneaky and avaricious taxi driver. These scenes have passion and spark. The rest of the film was a rather hum drum and occasionally bleak dark comedy/farce.

The concept has the bare bones of a very funny dark comedy, but the execution was not terribly successful here because the dialogue and action is not witty enough.

For a witty dark comedy that is not a million miles away in terms of its theme, I would suggest Throw Moma from the Train.

I read in one of the reviews that the two leads did not get on and that reviewer considered that this didn't show in the film. I think it did show, as the scenes with Hepburn and Nolte appeared rather forced to me.

This film has an offbeat premise, and many offbeat characters. The last theatrical release of Kate's career is neither a fitting nor typical valedictory -- and in that way, perhaps it is a fitting testimonial to Hepburn's career --- unconventional and poignant while always entertaining. Although the laughs are uneven and the subject matter may offend some, I found it entertaining and interesting.

Grace Quigley (Katherine Hepburn), an elderly woman, witnesses a hit man, Seymour Flint (Nick Nolte), in action. She finds that he has dropped his wallet and learns his identity. She then blackmails him into killing her, since she is elderly and has no reason to live but lacks the courage to take her own life. However he quickly develops a fondness for her, as a surrogate mother and so can not kill her. Instead they start assisting in the suicides of friends of Grace who no longer wish to live. The film is black comedy at its best and is one of my favourite films. The characters are likable and, wierdly, we end up rooting for them to die. Nolte's role as a sentimental hit man and his relationship with Grace are particularly amusing. This film is not for those who have a strong repugnant feeling against suicide but if you enjoy the bizarre, then you may very well like this film. If you do, then you could also like Harold and Maude.

Golan-Globus, something like that, and Cannon films: Ancient film producers from the early eighties when videocassettes were starting to change the nature of the American Movie Biz. Films had begun to boom!

Enter two extraordinary actors: Katherine Hepburn and Nick Nolte.

Nolte had been appearing in commercial Hollywood productions for years, but he is a real actor and wanted to appear in quality productions.

The prospect of appearing with Great Katherine must have seduced him into working with these hopelessly exploitive producers and Cannon films. Kate looks great, her Parkinson disease notwithstanding, in the last theater movie she ever made. It appeared in 1984, when she was still in her seventies, her etched cheekbones intact, and her teeth still movie star white.

Here's the plot: Kate Hepburn watches as Hit-man Nick Nolte, just barely in his forties, kills her noxious landlord. Impressed, Kate who has been thinking of checking out herself decides to hire Nick to off her. Before long, complications ensue. The whole gerontological

group that Kate knows, including most of the unemployed aging actors in New York, want to leave the stage, as it were, themselves. They want to join Kate in that great actors home in the sky.

The Plot thread is helped when Kate invites a friend to join her by arranging a package deal to have them both killed by Nick. But Nick turns out to be a sensitive hit-man, not willing to go along with all of Kate's murderous fantasies. The plot eventually spirals out of control. Nick offs few of the older set, but becomes very popular with this group. After all, if this Golan-Globus (they're the producers) hadn't put together these two stars, Walter Abel probably would have died before he worked in another film. The same goes for many of the other actors in this film.

Toward the end, a cabbie keeps Kate's shoe as ransom for a cab fare she can't pay. Kate wants Nick to off the cabbie. But this black comedy has wandered to too many side alleys. Nick's psychiatrist warns him that Kate has unearthed his sensitive side, and he had better change his ways.

In the end, there is no plot-driven denouement to this tale. Nick and Kate spot an enormous throng of old folks looking for a way to end it all near her apartment, and decide to escape these growing responsibilities by lighting out for what passes for the territories in Manhattan.

So who's driving the cab they hail on the street? You guessed it, the cabbie who stole Kate's shoe. The hack looks at her surprised, looks even more apprehensively at Nick, and turns around to drive his fares where they want to go.

Nick and Kate have apparently won some sort of battle by getting the last laugh on the cabbie, and so the film ends with both of them alive and smiling in the back of the cab, all their problems solved. Its not a great ending, but a fair compromise to finish this wildly out-of-hand scenario.

Katharine Hepburn in a Cannon production? Yes, and though the color process on the photography is typically brackish and the technical aspects of "Grace Quigley" seem slapdash, this turns out to be a quirky, exceptionally funny piece about a hit-man's friendship with an elderly woman in New York. Reportedly, Hepburn and Nick Nolte clashed during filming, but you'd never suspect that from the finished returns (they have an easy rapport). The crux of the plot (that aged folks would rather die mercifully at the hands of a hired killer then live in loneliness or pain) was controversial in 1984--and still smacks of bad taste--yet director Anthony Harvey keeps the whole thing bubbling like the most genial of comedies. As for Kate, she's feisty as usual, but also delightfully daffy and loose; she's a team player. **1/2 from ****