Fugitive Nights: Danger in the Desert

Why such a high rating: Sam Elliott, Teri Garr, Thomas Haden Church, and Joseph Wambaugh. This is a tough film to figure out; is it a serious mystery, or is it a tongue-in-cheek film. Regardless, it is worth a watch.

Garr is a retired police officer who did 20 years with the LAPD and has just opened an office in Palm Springs as a PI. Elliott is a run-down detective with the Palm Springs PD who is waiting for his pension to be approved due to medical issues. Church is a cop with a comic Dirty Harry wannabe dream so he can be transferred to the Palm Springs PD. The MacGuffin that brings our three main characters together is Barbara Babcock (Rhonda Devon) who wants Garr (Brita Burrows) to find out why her husband has had his sperm frozen.

From there we begin subplots that unite the various characters. Geno Silva is a suspected Mexican drug dealer. Jack Graves is a retired cop who suffers guilt for a shooting wherein he killed a 12-year-old boy. Doc Morton who knows the reason for the frozen sperm.

All of the unlikely threads pull together for a surprising climax.

Some of the downs are the metaphors Elliott uses throughout the film. Poor direction that doesn't build suspense, and misuse of actors. As I watched this film (thank you Amazon Prime), there were moments I came close to just stopping and moving on to something else. I was glad I didn't by the film's end. I can't know the reasons why the main cast signed on. Teri Garr perhaps due to her MS which she hadn't gone public with. Church was still doing Wings and his character was similar to Lowell Mather so he didn't need to stretch much. Elliott was perhaps waiting for Tombstone to begin shooting.

With serious directing this might have become a cult film. All I will say is, bear with it because you will be glad you did.

Spoiler, Sam wins hands down, everyone else's looked like theirs was glued on and very badly at that. I enjoyed the mix of actors, cartoon character acting with absolute crap script and what had to be a high school director. It's a Moonlighting wannabe that fails badly. Definitely a failed pilot...too bad, I'd continue to watch Sam in most anything...except this.

This is recognizably Wombaugh's later style of private eye yarn, but something may have been lost in putting it on the tube. He is always more interested in character development than plotting, but the interesting plot lines here all seem to fizzle out in unsatisfactory dead ends. Teri Garr is worth watching as a female shamus as she takes on a job of shadowing a wealthy client's husband who seems unaccountably interested in a sperm bank. Teri enlists the aid of a boozy cop and they keep dodging a seemingly mad killer who keeps crossing their path. That's all I'm going to say about the plot, which is full of surprises. You'll have to find out for yourself if you like the way it turns out. One thing, we never do learn if Teri gets paid. I said paid.