Um Jogo de Vida e Morte

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.

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.

Great "black comedies" have one thing in common, great acting. Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon in "Harold and Maude", Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov in "Eating Raoul", George Segal and Ruth Gordon in "Where's Poppa?", Frances Fuller in "Homebodies", and definitely right up there is Katherine Hepburn and Nick Nolte in "Grace Quigley." The deadpan planning of "helping" the elderly move on" is played perfectly, and Nolte finds Grace's business plan to be quite profitable. In order for "dark comedy" to work it cannot be mean spirited, and "Grace" handles all the arrangements in a very dignified manner. Also, this is the only movie on the Planet that has a car chase with four hearses. Recommended for sure. - MERK

The coming together of such disparate talents as Katherine Hepburn, director Anthony Harvey and the dreaded team of Cannon supremos Golan & Globus yields certainly the most idiosyncratic treatment of assisted suicide since Edward G. Robinson went to meet his maker in 'Soylent Green' in this project long nurtured by Miss Hepburn which heats up the old chestnut about a citizen hiring a professional hitman to provide his services.

Miss Hepburn and Nick Nolte certainly make strange bedfellows as the client and her employee with quirky contributions from Walter Abel, Kip Le Fever, William Duell and Elizabeth Wilson.

Grace Quigley (Katharine Hepburn) is a struggling senior living in New York City. She witnesses a professional hit performed by hitman Seymour Flint (Nick Nolte). She hides in his car. She had tried to commit suicide and sees him as a solution. She comes up with the idea to 'help' other suicidal seniors.

This is supposed to be a black comedy. It's in here somewhere. The characters are definitely oddballs coming out of left field. It's not actually funny and I don't know if it's actually fun. It has the underlying layer of sadness. I'm just not sure if this dark premise is a fun one.