Sunset movie review & film summary (1988)

The strangest thing about “Sunset” is that it's not a comedy, not exactly. It has some laughs, but it's a sort of low-key, elegiac mood film in which Hollywood seems like a vaguely disappointing place. The movie was written and directed by Blake Edwards, who is a master of sustaining a film's energy level, but this time he doesn't seem willing to turn on the juice. After two manic comedies in a row - “Micki and Maude” and “Blind Date” - and the high-energy tragicomedy “That's Life!,” maybe he felt like dialing down, but the result is a movie that's long on atmosphere and yet somehow keeps its distance.

The plot seems borrowed, not from old Westerns, but from old hard-boiled detective movies. It could have been written by Raymond Chandler. We meet the oily, corrupt studio chief (Malcolm McDowell); his fearful wife (Patricia Hodge); Cheryl King (Mariel Hemingway), a not-quite hooker with a heart of gold; a powerful gangster (Joe Dallesandro), and the usual dishonest and venal lawmen (played by those two dependable villains Richard Bradford and M. Emmet Walsh with kind of a side bet on who can be the most hateful).

Mix (Bruce Willis) decides to show Earp (James Garner) a night on the town, but hardly have the two arrived at the Kit-Kat Club when one of the girls is found murdered. The two men were befriended at the club by April, who dresses in a tuxedo and slicks her hair back to discourage the interest of the patrons (not an effective ploy), and she becomes their sidekick as they attempt to solve the crime, outsmart the evil and protect the innocent. The plot thickens when Mix is handcuffed and jailed on a trumped-up rape charge.