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Howard Franklin was originally a screenwriter who collaboreted with
Robert Zemeckis on
Romancing the Stone (1984) and scripted
Ridley Scott's Someone to Watch Over Me (1987).
He debuted as director with
Quick Change (1990), his first collaboration with comedian
Bill Murray. The film is fundamentally a satire of New York:
the crime, the dirty streets, the incompetence of the police, and so on
The film is not about the heist (as ingenious as it is) but about the getaway, which proves to be much more difficult: leaving the messy and crime-infested city of New York requires more talent than robbing a bank.
A clown enters a bank when the security guard is about to close the door,
pulls out a gun and shows that he has dynamite strapped to his body.
The old guard immediately surrenders. The employees of the bank and the
customers quickly obey his orders. The clown locks everybody in the vault and
takes all the cash. Meanwhile, the police surrender the bank.
The clown gets on the phone with the police captain and demands a helicopter
in exchange for a hostage. When the helicopter is delivered he asks the
hostages to select whom should be delivered first, and they choose a big man
who has been whining and vomiting nonstop. The clown then demands a bus
and offers two hostages. When the bus is delivered, two hostages walk
out: a sexy blonde whom the clown has abused verbally and a man we haven't seen before. As they are interrogated by the police captain we realize that this man is the clown and the woman is an accomplice. The police, however, still think that the clown is inside the bank holding many more people hostage.
The man, Grimm, and his girlfriend, Phyllis, and the whining hostage, Loomis,
flee the scene unnoticed. This was the perfect heist and Phyllis and Loomis
congratulate Grimm for his genius. Grimm makes one more call from a phone booth:
he calls the captain, pretending to be still inside the bank, and making another
demand, which is just an excuse to buy more time. While he is talking to the
captain, Loomis accidentally touches the car's horn. It takes only a few minutes
for the captain to realize that he has been fooled and the clown is actually
already out of the bank. The trio starts driving towards the airport. Alas,
New York is a mess as usual, and they can't find the road to the airport.
They stop to ask a man who looks like a gentleman and he turns out to be
a thug who robs them at gunpoint. Luckily for them, they have strapped
the money to their bodies and the thief only takes their good clothes.
So they head for Phyllis' apartment for a quick change of clothes.
Not finding legal parking, they park in front of a hydrant. It's supposed to
be a quick stop to fetch the clothes, but a man shows up branding a gun, convinced that they are thieves: Phyllis is moving out and the man is the new tenant.
It takes them a while to convince the man that they are not burglars.
Meanwhile, a fire starts in the building across the street, the fire truck
arrives and the firemen need to move the car that is blocking access to the
hydrant, which results in their car rolling down
the hill and crashing into some gardens.
The trio runs out and desperately tries to stop a taxi to go to the airport.
Finally one taxi driver stops but he doesn't speak English. They think he is
taking them to the airport but they soon realize that he doesn't understand
the word "airport". Loomis can't take it anymore and jumps out of the taxi,
crashing against a newsstand. The news reaches the captain who senses that
they must be the thieves. In order to hide from the cops, the trio walks into
the first unlocked door they can find: it's the hideout of a mobster. Grimm
pretends to be a "bagman" sent to pick up some money and manages to convince
the gangsters. So they walk out unharmed and even with extra money.
Loomis is injured and can only walk slowly. They see a bus that is
heading to the airport but the driver is an obnoxious maniac of precision
who wants them to pay with exact change, even though Grimm offer to pay much
more. Grimm has to get off, walk into a shop, patiently wait his turn and
then run out with exact change for three bus tickets. Just then the taxi
driver has returned to the scene and is trying to explain to the police that
he feels responsible for the man who jumped out of his taxi.
Just then the real bagman of
the mafia shows up and the gangsters realize that they have been duped by Grimm.
They all start running towards the bus to catch Grimm. Grimm boards just in time and
the bus leaves. The captain, confused, arrests both the taxi driver (who can't communicate) and the bagman
and tries to figure out what is going on.
Grimm hates New York and just wants to leave town. Phyllis is trying to tell
him that she's pregnant but he is too preoccupied with his new life as a bank
robber. Loomis is fearful and wounded.
Finally, Grimm learns that Phyllis is pregnant.
The bus drops them off 20 minutes from the airport. They get a ride from an
airport worker and make it on time.
Grimm gets the air tickets and they have all the money
strapped to their bodies, but Phyllis now hesitates: she doesn't want to
be the wife of a man who is so absorbed in his own schemes.
Grimm asks Phyllis to meet him on the plane. Grimm boards with Loomis
and doesn't see Phyllis on the plane. An obnoxious passenger keeps yelling
at Grimm and Loomis. The police captain has tracked them down and boards the plane
alone to arrest them. When the captain shows up, however, the obnoxious
passenger freaks out: it turns out he is the feared boss of the mafia.
The captain and the mobster fight. Grimm helps the captain arrest the mobster.
Phyllis comes out of the restroom (so she was on the plane after all).
The captain thanks Grimm for his help and leaves the plane happy to have
arrested the most famous criminal in town.
The press is waiting inside the airport to congratulate the captain.
The airplane is taking off and only then we see a look on the captain's face
that means it just occurred to him that the man who helped him and who is flying away is the clown who robbed the bank.
The Public Eye (1992)
He then directed one more comedy for Murray,
Larger than Life (1996), and scripted
The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997).
(Copyright © 2024 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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