Miami Blues

A decade or two ago I interviewed two miscreants who were spending their first night in jail and were about to spend a few years as guests of the State of Florida. 

They were in their early 20s and the state of Kentucky owed them a refund on their public education. 

He had shown up at her shack with a tank full of gas and fifty dollars in his pocket, professed his eternal love for her and said he would take her anywhere she wanted to go. 

She liked Spring Break and they picked my hometown of Panama City, Florida. 

When the money ran out they took to stealing cars and robbing stores and it didn’t take long until they were leading three sheriff’s agencies on a high speed pursuit through most of north Florida. 

When I got to him (let’s just call him Mickey) he denied everything. But when I said the driver pulled some real Smoky and the Bandit type maneuvers on the highway he smiled like someone had just given him a GED. 

She (let’s call her Minnie) denied everything too and never slipped, even a little bit, when I asked her what had happened. 

“We were just under the pier, hanging out and they all showed up and arrested us,” Minnie said. “We didn’t do nothing.”

Well, what did you think when 40 deputies showed up under that pier and arrested you? I asked. 

“I was dumbified,” Minnie replied. 

… 

I’m pretty sure we put dumbified in the headline. 

I thought of those two, for the first time in years, while watching Miami Blues. 

Alec Baldwin is fresh out of jail and he’s looking to share some of the meanness he learned in the joint with the rest of the world. 

He’s fun to watch because you can see that he only knows two types of people those who are about to be his marks and the victims of his violence. 

Jennifer Jason Leigh is a prostitute who is most likely underage and not experienced enough in the business to understand just how dangerous life with Baldwin’s Freddie Frenger will become. 

At one point in their relationship Leigh maps out a possible future involving buying a burger franchise, saving money, buying a house and living happily ever after. 

Freddie counters, let’s skip all that and get to the happily ever after. Why not, if they need cash there are always people he can assault and rob. 

There is a detective here (Fred Ward) who is, I suppose, chasing Freddie. But mostly he’s amused by Freddie. We meet him when he laughing about the manner of death of a Hare Krishna while the victim’s friend cries nearby. 

He’s clearly spent his career drunk, cynical and corrupt. Mind you, he’s no more corrupt than any other cop in this story and he does eventually, track Freddie down and confront him. 

It goes about like you might suspect. 

Ultimately, this is a black comedy that makes its mark on the crime genre. 

I thought it carried its weight and moved smoothly from one ridiculous moment to the next. 

I think the thing I enjoyed the most is that everybody on this movie was just so dumb. 

You’d hate to have dinner with any of these people but they are amusing from a distance.