Give ‘Em Hell Malone

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

R4 DVD

This strange film directed by Russell Mulcahy is an almost cartoon-like detective show, but it falls flat with some odd and unprofessional lapses in the period it is set in. It seems to be a tribute to those early private eye shows and borrows from many of them.

Malone is a private detective. He is hired to recover a mysterious suitcase that turns out to be full of apparent rubbish, but a lot of people are out to kill him to recover the contents of the case. It seems to have some connection with his dead family, killed by gangsters many years ago. It’s up to him to find this connection while staying alive.

It is a very violent film and Mulcahy glories in the blood, the closeup gunshot impacts and the shots of people being set on fire. The characters are all caricatures from the femme fatale to the evil businessman. “You can’t buy respectability but you can kill everyone who knows you’ve been bad.”

In a film of ordinary performances, Ving Rhames stands out as the killer who is developing a conscience and Eileen Ryan as Malone’s alcoholic, long suffering mother to whom Malone returns when he is in trouble. As, for instance, when he is lying shot and bleeding on the floor of her retirement home room. “I guess I should be grateful. If it wasn’t for these wonderful shootouts I wouldn’t get to see you at all”. .

The strange part about the film is it is a detective show set apparently in the forties, yet showing modern cars and container trains. That is incongruous and annoying. And why does his car have no numberplates? That should attract the attention of the police, surely?

Overall I’m not too sure whether the film is tongue-in-cheek or just clumsy. Still, if you like your films with a lot of unsanitised violence you will enjoy this one.

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