Who knew that Rip Torn and Sebastian Gorka were one and the same!
In order for a comedy about criminals with few restraints on their behavior to work, the characters really need to be parodies of who you might actually expect to find in these situations, and those in Nadine (1987) simply don’t make the grade. It works best if they exaggerate some character trait which, in reasonable quantities, might predispose them to bend their moral systems for financial gain, but we don’t really see that to any great extent here.
It’s 1954 in Texas, young Nadine is newly pregnant, her marriage to her bar-owning husband, Vernon, is on the ropes as his dreams of running a premium bar keep foundering, and in a moment of weakness, she agreed to a photo shoot with Raymond Escobar when he hints that Hugh Hefner may be interested. Recovering her good sense, she returns to the studio to demand those photos back, but when Escobar is knifed by an unknown assailant virtually in front of her, she grabs her folder of photos and scoots out the back door.
Once at home, though, she discovers the folder contains plans for changes to the local highway. Her husband shows up, looking for her signature on the divorce papers, and she promises to sign if he’ll help her with an ill-defined task. Back at Escobar’s, he helps her break-in, then realizes something’s wrong. While she’s searching for her photos, the local cops, assigned to keep an eye on the place, come in to get a brew and stumble on Vernon, who distracts him until Nadine whacks him in the back of the head.
After a whirlwind cop chase, they end up at her place. While she busies herself for one last fling, Vernon discovers the highway plans and flies out the door, intent on making his most immediate fortune, using his lawyer-cousin for financial leverage.
Meantime, the criminal who paid for the plans is looking for them, and the cousin turns to him for financial help. This helps the criminal get a hold of the plans, leading to a climactic battle in a junkyard.
But where are the plans? Well, you’ll have to watch, and even then you won’t know.
It’s not a half bad plot, but it comes off flat. Perhaps it’s the lack of chemistry between the leads, but I tend to think the real problem is they’re too believable. Sure, they’re financially grasping – but we’ve seen that in The Godfather insofar as the criminal goes, and Nadine and Vernon, well, both are from the wrong side of the tracks – it’s not unexpected that a certain lust for money, ill-gotten or no, will possess them. Playing by the rules, after all, doesn’t seem to be doing them much good.
And so the story glides fairly flatly from one mildly intriguing plot twist to another. We know where it’s going, though, and while we may not know exactly which fork in the path it may take here and there, we know the ending spot. And that makes it a bit boring.
