Not that Edwards wanted Bruce Willis. Not that he even wanted him for 1987\u2019s Blind Date<\/em>, his bigger-screen debut as a leading man after two years in the Moonlighting <\/em>mines. On that one, Sean Penn bailed. For this, Robert Duvall was too expensive. And although a case could be made for the former\u2019s interchangeability, Bruce Willis was no Robert Duvall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead of countering his image in the Edwardian fashion like he did the first time around – see also: alcoholic Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine & Roses<\/em>, topless Julie Andrews in S.O.B. <\/em>\u2013 the director told his repeat star to lean into it. Forget Tom Mix; play Bruce Willis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But this isn\u2019t a Bruce Willis movie, even if \u201cHudson Hawk Films Ltd.\u201d does beat all other credits to the screen. Sunset <\/em>belongs to James Garner, another TV boy made good, who isn\u2019t just playing someone else, but repeating himself, and well. This is the second time Garner\u2019s Wyatt Earp has survived the O.K. Corral, but unlike in 1967\u2019s Hour of the Gun<\/em>, it\u2019s only an intrusive thought. Tempting to call it PTSD, but the lawman\u2019s face is too calcified to tell. As he watches Mix recreate it the way it should\u2019ve happened, with polished bullets and acrobatic deaths, Earp remembers the way it actually did, nine men standing in the street and shooting until three of them weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the fake lawman asks if Hollywood got it right, the real one delivers the film\u2019s catchphrase \u2013 \u201cAbsolutely… give or take a lie or two.\u201d Sunset <\/em>is full of grim endings smiled through in close-up. Not one but two <\/em>significant deaths happen off-screen. As would remain Hollywood policy for most of the century ahead, the sadistic, possibly incestuous proclivities of evil Chaplin analogue Alfie Alperin are an open secret but only alleged, even by the camera. The very notion of a blockbuster silent film to win back American audiences in 1929, two years after The Jazz Singer<\/em>, is an overcranked trainwreck that presumably derails shortly after the end credits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even the advertising got in on the gritted teeth. Despite presenting Sunset <\/em>as a buddy comedy, it\u2019s neither. In a rare and somehow still misguided moment of historical veracity, Mix and Earp are such fast friends they never so much as frown at each other, nixing any possible fireworks. <\/em>As for the other half, this is Blake Edwards\u2019s Chinatown<\/em> and about as funny \u2013 the dubious mother-daughter relationship here is a winking Victor\/Victoria <\/em>reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What ties Sunset <\/em>together, however loosely, is right there on the tin. It\u2019s late in the day, the shadows are getting awfully long, and nobody wants to admit they\u2019ve noticed; it\u2019s a particularly clever touch to unravel the salacious mystery in the lobby of the first Academy Awards, where the applause insulates the elite from any gory detail. And yet, through all that twilight gloom, one man rides a white horse in a matching double-breasted suit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why does the world\u2019s greatest Western star throw his enormous hat in the ring to solve a murder mystery with a guy he just met yesterday? Because he\u2019s Bruce Willis, that\u2019s why \u2013 that\u2019s just the devil-may-care kind of guy he is. His two-and-a-half minute tango feels incomplete without a Seagram\u2019s Golden Wine Cooler in-hand. He can fight, but only after taking a slapstick dive in the first half. As Garner would later complain<\/a>, Bruce ad-libbed like it was going out of style, and it\u2019s easy to hear the man through the myth when he complains about ye olde tabloids: \u201cEngravings? Engravings is how counterfeiters make funny money, isn\u2019t it?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Three months after the release of Sunset, <\/em>a different line of cowboy improv would change life \u2013 \u201cYippee Ki-Yay.\u201d Nobody involved with Sunset <\/em>ever had much to say about it, at least nothing nice \u2013 Garner \u201chated that movie<\/a>\u201d \u2013 but it\u2019s not hard to read between the junkets. A week before Die Hard <\/em>opened, Bruce admitted to the Washington Post<\/em><\/a> it was the first time he\u2019d been proud of his work, deeming himself then and forever more interesting as a solo than a double act. And if that\u2019s not evidence enough, consider the rest of his mostly bullet-riddled career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Canby\u2019s faintest praise was that Sunset <\/em>would \u201ckeep dedicated film scholars busy for the next 50 years.\u201d That\u2019s already bad sooth at 35. Nostalgia makes bad jewelers of us all, this <\/em>is no hidden gem, just a fossil with a few shiny facets. The shiniest is Bruce Willis as <\/em>Bruce Willis, the last time he was more likely to play a cowboy in a white hat than a cowboy in a white undershirt. It appropriately ends with him goofing off into the sunset, even if, celestially speaking, it’s setting in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Sunset” is available for digital rental or purchase<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/sunset2-1024x859.jpg\")
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Sunset\u2019<\/em>s aimless saunter through half a dozen genres confounded audiences and critics alike. It didn\u2019t recoup half of its modest $16 million dollar budget, $2 million less than that summer\u2019s Big<\/em>. Vincent Canby couldn\u2019t even call it a movie<\/a>, just a series of events \u201cwithout characters, without anything, not even a point of view.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n