What happens when a sociopathic California criminal flies to Miami to start a new series of con jobs and thefts and is surrounded by the most absurd people on earth (i.e., baseline Florida residents) in a film that proves 1990 was still basically the 1980s? You get Miami Blues, the second of four films adapted from Charles Willeford’s novels, and the only adaptation that came from his popular series of novels about hardboiled detective Hoke Mosely. Directed by the late George Armitage, one of Roger Corman’s many disciples, fourteen years after his last film (1976’s Vigilante Force) and seven years before his most famous (1997’s Grosse Pointe Blank), Miami Blues is a bizarre picture that combines elements of neo-noir, erotic thriller, dark comedy, crime drama, and action flicks into something fascinating, funny, and thrilling. 

A man calling himself “Junior Gottlieb” (Alec Baldwin) arrives in Miami, and he’s barely made it off the plane before he’s stolen a stranger’s suitcase and broken the finger of an obnoxious Hare Krishna. He slips onto a courtesy shuttle and checks into the luxurious hotel that it takes him to, where the lead bellhop offers to send up a prostitute, and Junior accepts. When the young woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh) arrives, Junior reveals that he has no interest in her sexually, and that he was hoping to instead convince her to purchase some of the clothing in the luggage that he stole. Junior sees through her sex worker alias and tricks her into revealing that her real name is Susie, and the two end up sleeping together anyway, as the naive girl from Okeechobee falls for his dubious charms. Unbeknownst to Junior, the cultist that he assaulted at the airport died of shock, and the case falls into the lap of homicide detective Hoke Mosely (Fred Ward), a grizzled oaf of a man with terrible fashion sense, sharp observational skills that bely his slovenly appearance, and false teeth. He catches up with Junior at Susie’s apartment in less than 24 hours, implying that he knows the young man is guilty and highlighting the telltale signs in his behavior that indicate he’s served time, but also drinking up most of the young couple’s beer and (maybe) playing the dumb drunk in order to ingratiate himself. Junior sees through the act and tracks Hoke down to his residence, where he savagely beats the cop, stealing his badge, gun, and dentures, making him more dangerous than ever. 

It’s here that the film takes a fascinating turn. It’s very funny from its earliest moments; when Susie tries to beg off of spending the night together because she has a “lot” of homework that night—she has to write a haiku—Junior robs her neighbors while she takes a bath, all while extemporaneously composing several of them like “Breaking, entering / The dark and lonely places / Finding a big gun.” But once he has Hoke’s badge and gun, he opens up a whole new way to terrorize and rob people, which he gets away with for quite some time largely because he just … behaves like a cop. After shooting a would-be smash-and-grab thief at a dockside restaurant (only calling out “Freeze or I’ll shoot” after pulling the trigger) and realizing the power he wields, he tries to strongarm the bellboy/pimp who sent Susie to him by pretending that she was underage, at which point the man claims that he knows this isn’t true because her ID was checked by the cop he’s already bribing weekly. Junior interrupts several crimes in progress and takes advantage of the situation by “allowing” the perps to get away then making off with their loot, but what one notices the longer this goes on is that a violent psychopath is consistently responding to burglar alarms, purse-snatchings, and drug deals when the real police are nowhere to be found. At one point, Junior “busts” two musclehead drug smugglers and has them handcuff themselves to a metal bar, then he steals their product; Hoke’s soon-to-retire partner Henderson (Charles Napier) informs him that one of the two men was the killer in “The Dumbbell Murders,” a homicide that Hoke has been working for over a year, and jokes that maybe Hoke should let Junior close a couple more cases before apprehending him. 

The performances here are excellent. Jennifer Jason Leigh is almost unrecognizable, sporting a blonde pixie cut and an equally audacious southern accent, and although Susie’s under-written and dim-witted to a fault, Leigh still imbues her with a sense of pathos that demonstrates her understated abilities as an actor. Fred Ward is one of the great unsung character actors of his generation, and he is an absolute delight in this role. There were three more Hoke Mosely novels published after Miami Blues, and one gets the feeling that there was an attempted franchise in the making with this film that simply never continued, which is a shame; I would have loved to see him play this sleazeball a few more times. Perhaps the reason this never came to fruition is that Alec Baldwin simply steals the show here as the dangerous, deranged Junior. Miami Blues may be the best non-Jack Donaghy performance of his career, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that so effectively utilizes his icy, cold eyes as well as this one does. His ability to flip back and forth between dealing out unhinged violence and playing house with the beautiful young woman he’s conned into falling for his sob stories is truly something to behold, and he plays every scene with Leigh with a bizarre glee, as if he can’t believe he’s getting away with such an obvious farce. He thinks he’s hit the jackpot, but his cons mostly succeed because he’s facing off against deviants, simpletons, and deviant simpletons. It’s also worth noting that this is a film that isn’t hesitant to play on Baldwin’s contemporary sex appeal; he’s clad in nothing but his underwear or otherwise shirtless for long portions of the film, and the camera spends more time ogling his semi-nude form than it does Leigh’s. Fred Ward is also quite attractive (this was only two years after Big Business, after all), but the film keeps him covered up in tacky screen-printed silks and hospital neckbraces so as not to distract from the fact that this film is partially selling itself on Baldwin’s taut torso. 

The smaller roles here are also delightful. Charles Napier has a lot of fun playing off of Ward; their introductory scene finds them arguing about who has to break the news to the family of the deceased Hare Krishna, with Napier’s Henderson begging off even though it’s his turn because he took “the fat lady who sat on the kid,” which he claims “counts for two.” The exposition that he’s only one week away from retirement sets up the expectation that he’s going to die in the final reel, but he makes it to the end intact, firing off bon mots as he heads into the sunset. Nora Dunn gets less to do as Hoke’s new partner, Ellita Sánchez, but she’s memorable nonetheless, and it was probably more surprising to see her in a more serious role in 1990, fresh off of her five season run on SNL. Miami Blues is also a film that’s chock to the brim with one scene wonders. Paul Gleason, probably best remembered as the principal in The Breakfast Club, is a lot of fun playing against type as the vice cop who’s on the take with regards to the hotel prostitution ring, who finds and beats up the real Hoke after Junior tells the bellhop pimp to send money to him at Hoke’s apartment. The best minor performance, however, is probably the Honeymoon Killer herself, Shirley Stoler, as a no-nonsense pawn shop matron who sees through Junior’s act almost immediately and is one of the only characters who ever manages to get the better of him. 

Near the film’s end, there’s a scene in which vinegar pie, a nineteenth century custard pie that allowed for vinegar to be substituted as an acid for the more difficult to obtain lemon, plays a vital role. For contemporary critics, Miami Blues seems to have been a vinegar pie in and of itself, something that was almost unpalatable, too sweet and too sour at the same time, but it’s managed to become a bit of a cult classic, as indicated by its current presence on the Criterion streaming service. It’s definitely worth finding the time to enjoy.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond