Sitting Ducks (1980)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Written and Directed by Henry Jaglom
Starring Zack Norman, Michael Emil, Henry Jaglom, Irene Forrest, and Patrice Townsend

Released by: Wellspring Media
Region: 1
Rating: R
Anamorphic: Nope; appears in glorious 1.33:1.

My Advice: Repeat after me: "Independent does not necessarily mean good."

Simon (Emil) is an accountant for a bookie. He takes in the cash pick-ups, logs everything, and cooks the books to keep the authorities from looking too closely at his boss's bank accounts. His buddy Sidney (Norman) is a fast-talking con-man, who hatches a daring scheme to rob the very dangerous criminal people of all their ill-gotten gains, making a break for the border with Simon and living out their lives somewhere exotic and tropical on a suitcase full of mafia cash. The plan is actually deceptively simple. Sidney makes the regularly scheduled pickups, using Simon's knowledge of the process to pass himself off as the "new guy" on the collection route. Then, before anything untoward can happen, he books out of town with Simon, they fly far away, and enjoy their perfect crime.

Unfortunately, Sidney's an idiot. And Simon is so neurotic that he can't possibly keep his cool long enough to pull this off. So the two end up in a bizarre "flight" from the mob that never really goes anywhere, meeting a couple of scamming females (Forrest and Townsend) to complicate matters along the way. Never does it occur to them, when the plan goes a bit awry, to attempt some other avenue of escape. They just sort of sit around and wait it out, in hopes that they'll get away with it, without really trying very hard to do the actual getting away part.

It's movies like this one that make me glad I ditched my one and only History of Cinema class in college. See, I stuck around for the better part of the first half of the semester, and dropped it as workloads for other courses increased beyond my capacity to sit through another screening of things like Birth of a Nation. By sticking it out for the first half, though, I got all the info on the early days of film-making -- who the innovators were, what made them great, and what sorts of fantastic hoops had to sometimes be leapt through in order to bring one's vision to the screen. But I got out before somebody informed me that, as a discerning film connoiseur, Henry Jaglom was supposedly required viewing. See, the man has a reputation for having been at the forefront of the independent film movement, and his work is often cited as seminal to the indy movie scene. So I stumbled into Sitting Ducks without really knowing what to expect or having anybody else's force-fed opinion on his worth in my head.

In so doing, I saw the movie for what it really was -- mediocre. Now, the actors do their best, though Jaglom would do well to get away from the nepotism that trusts one of the lead roles to his brother. Norman is really the standout, though his character is sort of a one-trick pony, and the trick gets a bit old after the first half hour or so. None of the characters get really interesting development, the plot is essentially transparent after the first twenty minutes, and the laughs (this IS billed as a comedy, after all) never really show up. The whole thing is just so eminently forgettable that when the credits rolled, I wondered what I'd just done with those two hours of my life.

The DVD treatment doesn't exactly go out of its way to sell itself, either. With a full-screen transfer, washed out color that betrays the age of the original, and absolutely no features to speak of, there's precious little reason for even fans of Jaglom's work to pick this one up. Somebody could have tracked down a film historian to at least attempt to justify the reputation that Jaglom carries, or exactly what strange circle of events led to his rise as a supposed pioneer in independent film. I suspect, however, that it involved a crossroads, Jaglom's soul, and a mysterious man in a suit that insisted the contract be signed in blood.

There are certainly worse movies out there (gods know I've reviewed my share). But there are far better films out there, as well, including films that have a better claim to "seminal independent film-making" in their director's pinky finger than Jaglom's got in his entire corpus. He's like Woody Allen, only without the wit, the writing ability, the funny bits, and the stuttering.