User reviews

I suppose the best thing about this movie is Robert De Niro and Bill Murray both playing against type, and doing so very well. Uma Thurman was good also, looking very pretty even when also looking a bit mousy. I have never been a fan of David Caruso, but once you get past the fact that it is David Caruso, you can't help but enjoy the way he played his part. Long time character actor Mike Starr was sufficiently menacing while also showing a bit of a goofy side. Some people complained about this film being placed in the comedy genre, and that seems legitimate, but it is a film rather hard to characterize. You might call it a character study. It had amusing and wry moments, but it is hardly a comedy. Anyway it is an OK film, worth a look.

I keep on watching this movie and i like it more every time i view it. I am very surprised with Bill Murray's character, it was something diffrent from his usual parts. This movie is a black comedy and it's very very funny in parts, some great performances here too especially from Bill Murray who i never expected to see working with Robert DeNiro. This ones a keeper.

Most things in Mad Dog and Glory work. The film uses humour, a love story, cross casting and a scrape of suspense well and at various different intervals. What doesn't work are the overall frustrations that bog the film down. The premise is so simple, watching it might make you think you've seen it a hundred times before but that doesn't detract too much. De Niro plays a role that I hadn't seen him play before and must admit, I didn't think he had it in him following other such performances like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Ronin where he played various different roles with various different aims. Here he pulls off the nervous, shy photographer whom just goes about his business and although it takes some getting used to, it's a pleasant surprise.

He can be contrasted with Bill Murray's character of Frank Milo who is a criminal/mob boss that is saved by De Niro's character following a gun point robbery. What's clever about this fact is that Murray is playing the character De Niro normally plays and vice-versa. Throughout the film, the script is consistent. Mad Dog (De Niro) gets to confess some jokes to Milo since he also works as a stand up comic; something we're more familiar to Bill Murray doing, and the awkward exchanges between Mad Dog and Glory (Thurman) also evoke some emotions.

Uma Thurman is just about 'put-upable' in this film. Her character is right on that fine-line you get that separates 'likeable' and 'annoying' in a very distinct way. Once more, the overall treatment of the female characters also stands out in a rather obvious way. At the bars, it's all women who run around serving the men who sit there and enjoy themselves; the character of Glory, as I've said, has a dopey, annoying voice and is someone whom is to phone Milo on instructions. Glory isn't very smart either and when, nearer the end in a heated exchange between Mad Dog and Milo, Milo yells 'You love her? I OWN her!' it's really made to seem like the screenwriter has something against the female side of our species.

Although the film is pretty much consistent throughout in its subject matter with Mad Dog and Glory spending enough time with one another to begin to like each other, Frank Milo remaining a constant, background friend and foe alike; it falters towards the end when certain characters try to raise money and the ending is such a horrible, happy, un-realistic ending – it actually leaves a bad taste in the mouth when the feeling should be very different. Sure, I was happy for the characters involved but it was too generic. Reading up on it, I found that there were two endings meaning that even the makers were undecided.

Regarding Uma Thurman, this is a film of hers I feel I never would have seen had it not been for some dedicated searching and I was certainly very surprised when the sex scenes with De Niro came along since I'd always assumed she'd done Dangerous Liasons in 1988 and then nothing until 1994's Pulp Fiction which then, kick-started what was a series of successful, well known films. The reason for my surprise is that I never hear anyone mention this film as one of either Thurman's or De Niro's best. It's true that it's far from great but the sheer surprise at realising both had done this film in their careers is enough to realise and to respect the acting talent involved. From now on, when people speak of Uma Thurman or Robert De Niro, this is a film of their's I will bring up and probably recommend.

...but why?

My first guess would be...Uma Thurman. She's one of the most beautiful and talented actresses, that gives a special touch to a romantic movies.

Second guess? Always good Robert DeNiro, nice romantic story and some laughable moments.

All in all, this is one of the movies, which won't make a big change in the history of cinematography, but because of a special love story and Uma, will always have a special place in my heart. That's why a

7 out of 10

This film, starts as a routine cops and robbers shoot-em up, quickly turns into something quite different (and quite amusing) but then fails to go anywhere. The plot is intriguing enough that you expect a twist, a surprise, a hook at the end. But no. It concludes with a whimper and not a bang. However Bill Murray is always fun and Robert De Niro is always good (although Uma Thurman's performance pales against those of her two male co-stars.) Having said all that, it's entertaining enough. I even added a couple of jokes from the film, one of them told by DeNiro, to my repetoire. ("My wife thinks that fondling and cooking are cities in China." Not bad.) There also is some snappy dialogue. I was pondering a six or seven as I watched it but the wimpish ending knocked that back to a five.

A surprisingly strong script and solid acting performances saved what could have been a mediocre story involving cliché stock characters. As it turns out, the movie features a sensitive portrayal of a wanderlust cop, his wirey and scrappy colleague, an off-key loan shark, and a vulnerable girl. Each of the characters was subtly amusing and unique-- but not framed to be cartoonish. If the script had attempted to go in for more jokes, the movie would have suffered-- how many movies involve a disgruntled cop and a mob guy who sees a shrink? Too many... Many that often rely on overplayed cliché and slapstick to deliver. Or they go in for the melo-drama. Instead, the film just hopped along, taking the quirky story seriously, producing a film that is neither screamingly funny nor powerfully dramatic but instead small, light, and mildly interesting. Picture a just slightly-darker Mickey Blue Eyes, with a happier ending, a more interesting set of characters, and less humor.

The main attraction of this film is the opportunity to watch two outstanding, idiosyncratic actors, originals with a host of inferior imitators, but from totally different traditions, and varying styles and histories, playing off each other. In this respect, its nearest relative is the 1964 comedy 'Bedtime Story', which pitted the anguished master of American Method, Marlon Brando, against suave British comedian, David Niven.

The attraction is less in the exercise of skill than the clash, the promise of sparks, of colliding visions of what it is to be an actor. This requires a thorough awareness of the actor's persona and a steady dismantling of it. 'Glory' would seem to be far removed from De Niro's normal territory - it is set in the criminal milieu, yes, but he is a cop. Not only that, but his habitual volatility is replaced by a shyness and reluctance that is not so far from cowardice.

On the other hand, like Travis Bickle, Mad Dog is an alienated loner in the big city, confronted in the course of his daily work with random horror. And although he seems quite sweet, there is a menace in those familiar mannerisms that bespeak a mortified pride that can only take so much, that will finally erupt in primal, la Motta-like violence. When this point comes, however, it's not quite what we expect. Well, I certainly didn't expect to see Bill Murray kicking De Niro in front of friends and gangsters like he was a pestering, rather than mad, dog. And Mad Dog's violence is only the last straw after his characteristic humiliating obsequiousness doesn't get the required result, and to which he is eager to return rather than face more kicking. It is a violence that has none of the warped grace of Bickle, being more the gallumphing ineptness of an inebriate. That de Niro manages to make this potentially ridiculous character sympathetic is a tribute to his talent. He can't make him very interesting though.

Although de Niro, like Brando, is the 'great' 'actor' in this concept, it is the frustratingly fleeting glimpses of Murray we crave. His stand-up comic/gangster loan shark/ slave trader is an extraordinary creation, a conception of pure evil on the level of Kurtz, flattened out by amiable amorality and style until it becomes nothing, neither friend nor foe, neurotic nor bosom buddy; a terrifying unpredictability normalised by unruffled banality.

it's a shame, therefore, that the film doesn't really work. One problem is the script, which doesn't really do anything, and subverts the old Hawksian narrative of childlike hero/coward and making him a man, without really putting anything in its place. The most serious gap, however, is the 'neutrality' effecting character, plot, direction - where 'Bedtime Story''s scientific equation created chemical sparks, driven by immorality; Murray and de NIro's conflict is neutered by amorality.

The role of Thurman suffers in this, and is almost irrelevant; similarly the frightening violence of the opening ten minutes is cancelled out by the following comedy-gangster tone which never hits the right note, although the scene where Mad Dog finally loses his virginity and plays along to Louis Prima at the scene of a murder is priceless. MacNaughton's usual themes of voyeurism and surveillance - Mad Dog is a police photographer who peeps at the lovers across the yard - are ineffectively developed. The whole thing feels like one of those synthetic neo-noirs made on the 'Fallen Angels' TV programme.

A terrifically good little film with a slick and funny script, consummate actors allowed to strut their stuff, a tight edit, and a wonderful sort of black humour that had me laughing out loud. Yes, it's fairly predictable, but I didn't mind knowing where it was heading because it was so much fun getting there.

That said, it's not a film for everyone. It's sort of a "Pretty Woman" meets "Fargo". If that combination doesn't appeal, then this film probably won't either. But I thought it was a real gem. Two big thumbs up.

After his life is saved by a lonely cop, a mobster who moonlights as a stand-up comedian provides the cop with a beautiful young companion.

I love that the mobster hails from Melrose Park, which I would call the most corrupt of all the Chicago suburbs. One also has to notice the mobster in therapy, which sort of anticipates "The Sopranos". And, of course, a dynamic performance from McNaughton regular Tom Towles.

Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, saying, "The movie is very funny, but it's not broad humor, it's humor born of personality quirks and the style of the performances." He went on to add that the film is "the kind of movie I like to see more than once. The people who made it must have come to know the characters very well, because although they seem to fit into broad outlines, they are real individuals -- quirky, bothered, worried, bemused." He probably gave the film higher honors than anyone else, as many seem to find it just so-so or even boring.

MAD DOG AND GLORY sums up with what's been wrong with Hollywood for many years - It tries and makes cross genre movies that appeal to everyone

Robert DeNiro plays Wayne Dobie a cop who's too affable for his own good and who'd rather be a photographer . What he's a cop in a big city and after so many years it's just now struck him he'd rather be doing something else ! I was also curious ( Apart from giving the movie a snappy name ) why he goes by the name " Mad Dog " if he's so mild mannered ?

The reason for this might have been explained on screen but I had a problem trying to keep up with it as it kept switching genres . The opening sequence screams that it's going to be a violent - Very violent - urban thriller , there's bits after this that hints it might be a farcical comedy and then the movie settles down into a rom com . The producers ( One of whom is Martin Scorsese ) might think they're making a movie for everyone but I promise if you like one aspect of how the movie plays out you'll also be very irritated by the other aspects and when you make a movie with something for everyone you're in serious danger of making a movie with something for no one

Time and time again I try to see movie comedy try to transcend its material to create some sort of comic lunacy. They take all their characters and exagerate them to the point of being caricatures instead. MAD DOG & GLORY could very well have done that to Milo, Glory and Wayne. But instead of making a mockery out of their world for simple laughs and guffaws, director McNaughton plays the comedy at human level, in turn making this little gem something different. Every project John McNaughton takes on seems to be effectively low-keyed. He made HENRY one of the most frightening and violent films of the 90's by playing down the glorification of violence. He did it this time with the comedic material in MAD DOG & GLORY, making us laugh with its characters, and not at them. As for the acting? Impeccable.

We used to be watch a powerful De Niro, Mobster, Gangster, tough and untamed Cop, anyway a badass character, although he has a nickname of Mad Dog which he doesn't it justice in this picture, actually Wayne is quite friendly official photographer cop at forensic police, also slight fainthearted guy, quiet and methodic, shy with mature women, living alone, just few friends, quite opposite for De Niro trademark.

One night saves the bleak mobster guy Frank Millo (Bill Murray) in an assault at store, thereafter he was invited by Millo to his private club for a chat, even faltering he decides to go, sadly the clumsy waitress Glory (Uma Thurman) when serving a hot coffee accidently burns your hand, under false pretenses Millo send the own girl Glory "to take care" of him for one week, as honest cop that keeps its honor unbending, Wayne refuses, though Glory asking for stays, due she owes favors to crook Millo as she explains, if she returns right away the chastisement will be worst, therefore he accepts with strings attached, any sexual favors at behest of Milo.

Wayne already awares that the handler Millo wants his friendship "to Buy" a little favours here and there when will be in trouble, due he is a crook loan shark with obscure customers, who sell their soul to get some money, as said Glory "looking for the poisoned Millo is something like tries cure alcoholism with strong dosage of cocaine", nonetheless Wayne and Glory ends breaking the own rules getting involvement each other, thus the weak cop has to face the heartless Millo.

The comic Bill Murray is fantastic as rotten villain, everything he does hoping advantages in returns, no exceptions, Wayne wanna keeps Glory there, Millo agree whilst he could pay mere 40.000 bucks for its leeway, fabulous picture that passed beat, aside the three leading roles also has David Caruso as tough cop and Mike Starr as heavy bodyguard, they have a special quarrel since the beginning, actually a sub plot, the final is highly unexpected, deserves a second chance!!

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

First watch: 2021 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.5

For me, it's a dark comedy. Seeing De Niro doing something similar to what he did in the excellent Stanley & Iris (1990) is something to be appreciated; all the actors here give a memorable characterization. The director takes the film through the urban violence of a "dangerous city" like Chicago, with scenes in the best Abel Ferrara style, but at one point I felt like the story was trying to grab onto something to hold it together, to give it more intensity, but it couldn't find it and fell flat. I thought that perhaps Murray's dry but very funny humor would give it more space, but that didn't happen either. However, as a gangster, I liked his performance. Beyond that, the moments between De Niro and Thurman raised my expectations and delivered, especially the sex scene, which was very timely here, because a character like De Niro's-shy, nerdy, lonely, and silent-deserved this chance to let off steam, even if it was with a humble prostitute played by Thurman. Mad Dog & Glory might be considered a small work made by the trio of actors in the 90s, but for cinephiles or those who like good, simple stories, this will remain as an excellent memory. 6/10 stars.

Imagine three American cops all sleeping, some on the floor of the police station, when they are woken up by a telephone call about a homicide. For a change a Hollywood film appears to be real, unusually real.

A few minutes into the film and you see the cop-cum-photographer letting a murderer slip away just to save another man's life. You sit up. How many cops do that? This script is not the usual stuff.

Some minutes later, you are shown the cop picking up newspapers for his neighbors and placing them outside their doors. What's more, when a lonely female neighbour offers him a possible sexual tryst for free, he refuses. and he doesn't have a wife or a regular girlfriend. This is the same man, who obliged a cop's taunt for a group photograph of the crowd near the homicide spot. But the director never obliges the viewer who is wondering why the cop took that "group" photograph.

The character of Mad Dog is not the only one richly developed by the intelligent script. Those of Glory and Fran Milo also develop as the film progresses--only Thurman's Glory almost overshadows De Niro's Mad Dog. The script, Thurman and De Niro raise the level of the film above the ordinary, while you wonder why the director began with the senseless gory killings, why the director had the "group" photograph taken, and why sequence of De Niro dancing to a juke box was necessary.

The film attempts to flesh out several colorful characters and as character studies the film is definitely good entertainment and value for money--while the overall structure of the film will disappoint you. Now in Europe the film would be accepted but I will be surprised if the average American will love this inward looking film that leaves much to be desired on the technical front.

Contrary to what you might expect from a picture from the director of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (John MacNaughton), producer Martin Scorsese and Academy Award Winner Robert De Niro, Mad Dog and Glory is not a violent movie neither a crime epic; in fact, it's an odd, strange, love story.

The `ruthless' mobster here is comic actor Bill Murray and De Niro plays the sweet, shy, repressed cop, uncomfortably dealing with in nature sensual Uma Thurman. I'm a huge De Niro fan and I also love the sarcastic Bill Murray. Mad Dog and Glory is sustained by this cold connection between the two actors, which appear to be playing reverse roles, but manage to be incredible believable and surprising as individual characters. Uma Thurman is charming as the girl in debt to the small-time crime boss and David Caruso delivers a solid, contained, performance.

There's a pacing problem in the script filled with wonderful dialogue, but if Mad Dog and Glory clearly fails to fit in the crime genre for its obvious reasons, it also does not totally success as a character driven comedy/drama because there's a lack of chemistry between the three main actors. I mean, De Niro plays a shy, introverted police photographer; Murray is sarcastic as always, funny but distant, and Thurman is in the middle of both, kind of lost.

I liked Mad Dog and Glory though it's not a magical movie; it's simply an odd love story, sometimes funny, always cold. It's a movie which has some common ingredients but manages to do something different.

I watched this with a good friend of mine. The acting and the characters were sound. The cast is loaded with proven talent. But these do not make up for pedestrian script writing.

The whole movie became cliché loaded upon common cliché in an endless pause of predictable moments and plot setups. Not a single surprise to define the work. In my buddies words, "Has anything happened yet?".

Here again, here's a movie I liked the first time and discarded after the second viewing. It just lost its appeal. Part of that appeal was Uma Thurman, who can be awesome-looking at times (and the opposite at other times!). But, add Robert De Niro and Bill Murray and that's quite a threesome.

This story is a bit quirky thanks in large to Murray who plays a unique character: a very strange kind of mobster. The story was intriguing the first time but its bad points overwhelmed at me on the second viewing, enough that wouldn't watch this again.

What bad points? Well, I didn't like were three things:De Niro with the age-old-only-in Hollywood line "I love you" to Thurman even though he'd only known her for less than two days; a cheap shot against policeman where they show the cop next door as a cowardly wife-beater; and mainly just too much of a nasty meanness to this movie. Afterward, when I saw that Martin Scorcese co-directed and produced this film, that explained my last complaint. Sometimes ("Casino," for example, he overdoes the nasty stuff.)

If you don't like movies that are adequately summarized in a 20 second spot, if you do like to see actors work against stereotypical expectations and do it well, if you don't believe people or endings are all good or all bad and you're OK with that, this might be a movie you will want to add to your collection. DeNiro is doing the expected only in that he is practicing his patented shape shifting technique -- I found his characterization both believable and involving. Murray gives his first great serious performance -- who knew he could be menacing? Uma is hard to figure, in the way conflicted people often really are. David Caruso gives the most out-there performance I have seen from him, and in this movie it works. (I didn't know him in his first TV cop series, but this character is nothing like the one he plays in CSI Miami.) You might even find yourself rethinking what really happened, and liking that, too.

***SPOILERS*** Off-beat love story about a Chicago Police photographer getting involved with a mobsters woman who's life he just saved. Wayne "Mad Dog" Dobie, Robert De Niro, is on the scene of a double-murder when he decides to go to a nearby bodega to get a bite to eat. It's there that he notices that the counter boy, Derek Annuniation, is really a stick-up man with the bodega owner shot dead and a customer on the floor with a gun to his head.

Wayne the "Mad Dog" talking the hoodlum into just walking away, since there's dozens of cops swarming all around the neighborhood, takes takes his advice and scoots out of the place. Later at the local bar where Wayne is having a few drinks with his fellow police photographer Mike, David Caruso, he's approached by this big soft-spoken hood Harold, Mike Starr. Harold asks Wayne to go to the Comic-Cazie club, free of charge and even have a drink on the house,to see his boss who says he owes Wayne a favor.

Wayne not at first interested to go to the Comic-Cazie nightclub changes his mind and finds to his surprise that the star attraction there is stand-up comedian Frank Milo, Bill Murray, the person who's life he saved at the bodega! Not only that but that Frank is also the owner of the club and a big-time Chicago hoodlum who specializes in lone sharking. Frank is so appreciative of Wayne's cool-handedness that kept him from getting his brains blown out that he sends him this, the best word I can find to describe her, geisha girl who he calls Glory,Uma Thurman,to live at his apartment and fulfill his wildest fantasies for a week as a gift of his gratitude.

Glory just happened to be a bartender at the Comic-Cazie the night Wayne went there to see the show and accidentally burned him by spilling a pitcher of hot coffee on his hand which wasn't exactly the best way the meet his future "salve-girl". As Glory opens up about her involvement with Frank whom she's indebted to in order to save her brother, who owes Frank some $70,000.00, from ending up in the bottom of Lake Michigan Wayne starts to slowly fall in love with her. Wayne gets so hooked on Glory where he refuses to return her back to Frank after her weeks stay with him and even goes so far to try buy her back from him. Wayne also became very disturbed after he got to shack up with Glory when the robber/murderer of the bodega was later found shot and killed and dumped in a garbage can. Which had all the earmarks of a mob hit engineered by non-other then his new friend and benefactor Frank Milo.

Making up his mind not to return Glory back to Frank, and a life of slavery, leads to Wayne being marked for either a beating or even getting whacked by the Milo Mob. This brings the very best out of Wayne turning the meek and introverted "Mad Dog" into a fearless and unflinching tiger. Who not only takes on Frank Milo and his gang but inspires his fellow police friends, who he in the end Wayne really didn't need, to come to his aid.

The movie just grows on you even though you have trouble at first accepting it's premise "The Cop and the Salve Girl". The top-notch acting by all involved, especially Robert De Niro, makes you easily overlook all of the films "Mad Dog and Glory" faults and inconsistencies and just sit back and enjoy it.

Comedy has never suited De Niro. McNaughton's lazy direction, the heavy jokes of the 80's, the emptiness of the whole... finish revealing to this strange apparatus, its own emptiness.