From the Hip (1987)

(On Cable TV, September 2022) It’s amazing, looking back at childhood (and teenhood) film memories, what stuck and what didn’t. There are great movies I know I’ve seen as a boy but have almost no memory of, while Soul Man and Police Academy remain vivid. I can’t explain it. But I can tell you that I was delighted by watching the first few minutes of From the Hip and going “That’s it! That’s the movie with the scene of the guy waking up his wife by dumping an ice-cold pan of water on her!”  The charm of recognition helps explain why I think so well of the film, even if it’s not generally well-regarded by reviewers. I can understand the sentiment: In this legal comedy, Judd Nelson plays a showboating young man who manufactures his lucky breaks and shamelessly goes over-the-top in the courtroom. It doesn’t take a law degree to understand that the film is a pure fantasy most of the time, with antics that would be unacceptable if it wasn’t for movie-magic moments. But here’s the thing: it’s a lot of fun. There’s something that I find engrossing in the protagonist’s determination, the quality of the dialogue, and the escalating tension of the film as it shifts from fluffy comedy to a courtroom suspense with a real antagonist. There are many great moments, such as John Hurt’s soliloquy on how he could hypothetically be the murderer, that may feel out-of-tone with the rest of the film but nonetheless have their own compelling power. Best of all, however, is the characters’ likability despite the contrived script: Despite having theoretically already seen the film (even if I didn’t remember anything from the second half), I got surprisingly engrossed in what was happening. Sure, there’s something that doesn’t quite work in those final ten minutes—bits of staging, escalation of rhetoric, or something like that. But in the end—I liked From the Hip. No shame, no further elaboration.