Hickey & Boggs

Bill Cosby and Robert Culp

Robert Culp's Hickey and Boggs, from 1972, is a mediocre LA based noir with Bill Cosby (Hickey) and Culp (Boggs) as private investigators. The project was a reteaming of the pair who had starred together in the lightweight television espionage series I Spy. Cosby had insisted that Culp direct as a condition for participating on the film. This brought mixed results. Culp excels in the dialogue free exposition sequences, but flubs the film's action sequences. The ensemble scenes, mostly focusing on the film's cops busting Hickey and Boggs' chops, are lively, but Culp is so indulgent with his cast that Vincent Gardenia and Robert Gandan over act badly. There are a number of good performance by faces familiar to those who revere 1970s American cinema: Rosalind Cash, Michael Moriarty, Ed Lautner, and James Woods.

The film's script, which has Hickey and Boggs investigating a missing woman sought by both the police and the mob, was the first Walter Hill screenplay to be produced and is the film's major asset. However, Hill envisioned a seamier picture than what resulted. He thought that the ideal casting would have been Jason Robards (as Hickey) and Strother Martin. Cosby and Culp have a pleasant, PG rated cameraderie that is somewhat at odds with the picture's milieu. When the lead actors are confronted with darker moments in the script, Boggs' drinking and Hickey's losing a loved one, they flounder. Still, I felt Hickey and Boggs is better than its rather dire reputation. Most people can probably live without it, but fans of 1970s noir should check it out.