User reviews

This film is consistently rated at or below the median for it's genre and period. In my opinion, this is an unfair rating... the film is better than it has been portrayed.

Jeff Bridges plays Matt Scudder, a down on his luck detective who is suspended by the LAPD after a violent confrontation with a suspect.

Bridges life spirals down (in something of a preview of the character he would later play in perhaps his best film, 1991's The Fisher King) into chronic alcoholism. He receives an unexpected invitation to a party hosted by Angel Maldonado (Andy Garcia in an early role) and there the story proper begins.

Scudder is drawn into the dark side of LA's party scene by "Sunny", one of Maldonado's erstwhile hangers on. Through this connection, Scudder determines to bring down Maldonado's drug empire - and make off with Maldonado's favourite girl...

All standard hollywood stuff, but reasonably well done. The mid 80's seems to have been a fairly soft time for truly good films, but this one is worth watching. I give it 7/10 on the public scale...

Jeff Bridges portrays author Lawrence Blocks' character Matt Scudder in this picture, and his able performance is one of its few virtues. Matt is a detective for the L.A. Sheriffs' Department who is also an alcoholic. Ultimately, his drinking costs him his marriage and his job. However, he is soon approached by a hooker named Sunny (Alexandra Paul) to remove her from her unhappy life, and when he gets involved, he incurs the wrath of a smug drug kingpin (Andy Garcia) and a powerful pimp (Randy Brooks).

Sadly, this was the final theatrical credit for editor turned director Hal Ashby. A recovering substance abuser himself, he had little to no creative control over the final product. He wanted something grittier and closer to the novel (which this movie barely resembles), the producers wanted a feature film version of 'Miami Vice'. But what really hurts it is the poor script (credited to Oliver Stone and R. Lance Hill (a.k.a. "David Lee Henry"), which moves at a snails' pace and doesn't encourage us to really care about the characters.

The lack of success is not for lack of effort on Bridges' part. He, the intense Brooks, and the amusingly slimy Garcia entertain the viewer sufficiently. But Paul is miscast, and Rosanna Arquette, as one of Sunny's co-workers, looks like she couldn't care less. Familiar faces in supporting roles and bits include Vyto Ruginis, James Avery, Tommy 'Tiny' Lister, Rosalind Allen, and Loyd Catlett.

Absolutely gorgeous photography, good use of locations, an atmospheric score by James Newton Howard (one of his earliest), stunning helicopter shots, and some jarring violence work in the films' favor. But it goes on too long (especially that climactic confrontation in the warehouse, which becomes unbearable rather than tense), and has too much inane dialogue.

The man who made "Harold and Maude", "Coming Home", and "Being There" deserved a better theatrical swan song than this.

Five out of 10.

"8 Million Ways to Die" is a perfect example of why Jeff Bridges is one of my favorite actors. The overall movie might be muddled (even bad) but he always brings a laser focus to the job; more often than not, he keeps things alive and kicking. Here, he's playing an alcoholic cop who only really develops an interest in the case after he fails to keep his employer alive. And he really sells the self-loathing that comes with addiction.

This is one of those mid-'80s noirs, comparable to "Against All Odds" and "To Live and Die in L.A." (although not as good as either of those). The plotting is scattered throughout, but it starts out very nicely (a beautiful aerial opening) and sees a few startling lows (a snowcone negotiation and a frenzied warehouse shouting match). Trivia has it that the production was troubled by rewrites and studio interference, and that certainly shows in the final product. Ultimately, it just reminds me of better movies.

5/10

I was baffled as to why decidedly arthouse director Hal Ashby would take on a commercial noir flick like this. It has all the scummy working parts but somehow, the blend of his quirky style and the material misses ever so slightly. It starts off REALLY strong but seems to lose a ton of gas when at the end. The film is...well, it could be a double bill with "Inherent Vice" or "Cutter's Way" A rogue alcoholic cop turned ex-cop from his mistakes attempts to investigate the murder of a hooker he had taken a liking to. That's it. He has friends in dirty places. Hookers, pimps, drug dealers, and the best part...all of them can justify their vocation. Scum begets scum and game recognizes game. And it's fun for the most part. Particularly to see Los Angeles in the 1980s. Other than that, it does become a mess. And you can tell when they just let the script go and start vamping for time. As great as an actor that Jeff Bridges, Rosanna Arquette and Andy Garcia are...they really falter when it came to improvisation. Was it that director Ashby just threw his hands up in resignation. Can't tell. But it's hard to have too many cooks into this meal. All in all, whatever may have transpired behind the scenes, I can't help but enjoy the hell out of some of the moments. A few moments is all that matters. And that's enough. Moments of dark humor are good enough for me. An interesting 80's noir flick.

I am a huge Hal Ashby fan - he was a brilliant editor (Oscar winner for In The Heat Of The Night) and an even better director (Being There, Coming Home, Shampoo, to name a few) but this film is a mess. I just read a book on Ashby's life and here was a lot of trouble on this film - the studio wanted a sleek Miami Vice type film and of course Ashby wanted a gritty movie closer to the author Laurence Block's books. You can tell there's huge chunks missing - the film is disjointed - Bridges does a nice job playing the damaged cop but in one of the worst pieces of miscasting - Alexandra Paul plays the sultry hooker who is supposed to lure Bridges and she is awful - about all she can play is flirty sorority girl and their scenes are dull and boring. Rosanna Arquette has nothing to play - a one dimensional another hooker with a heart of gold. Garcia does his best with what he has to play and there are some good scenes btwn him and Bridges. But overall, a schlocky mess with a terrible 80's synth score.

There has been a lot of hate through the years thrown at this movie and you can see its convoluted production permeates the screen at some points with rather disjointed editing work. But the direction of the great Hal Ashby is thrilling and sexy and Jeff Bridges radiates from the screen, making it impossible to take your eyes off him. Also, Andy Garcia is an explosive villain and the film noir vibe, with all the flawed characters, is spot-on. Worth a revisit.

Sadly, this was Hal Ashby's final bow as a director.

The man who gave us "The Last Detail", "Coming Home" and "Being There" seemingly threw together this agonizing-to-sit-through hodgepodge of alcoholics, drug addicts and hookers that seems to work only as mind-numbing montage of film noir cliches. What makes it even more painful is that it's both very loud and very dull, and nothing makes any sense until the film reaches a conclusion so inevitable, you wish they would've gotten to it about 75 minutes sooner.

Not convincingly performed, with a hell of a dramatic climax in that warehouse, which is the bit that this movie is mainly remembered for. Yes, I saw it decades ago, and tonight, on DVD. And what was good back then, now just seem ludicrous. But I'm [email protected] and not here to discuss the action parts.

Alexandra Paul must have been desperate for an acting job. Gee, she plays somebody whom lieutenant Stephanie Holden of BAYWATCH fame would have loved to set straight. Hey, full-frontal nudity as 'the streetlights makes her pubic hair glow'... She does seem utterly, utterly miscast... This might be because of this hindsight.

But the main reason to watch glamor-wise is (cue the Toto song here: Ali I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes, Rosanna, Rosanna): Lady Rosanna Arquette. And although the script literally has yucky moments, once she is thrown into the shower and the unnecessary makeup is washed off, wow, dudes! What a stunner!

I've cheered for this actress during the Eighties. She wasn't in successful big hit movies, real success eluded her, and I saw all that potential going to waste. Here's a good one though, to remember her by. That scene where she's clearly naked under the bedsheets, oh wow dudes! MY HEART PUMPS CUSTARD FOR HER, to coin a phrase.

To the prudes reading this: I'm just an old boy. If you saw this movie when it was on the cinema circuit, and you're waffling on about it almost 30 years later, of course you have to be an Old Boy. And Old Boys appreciate pretty girls. And get kinda silly drooling. Sigh.

If you're not into seeing these two actresses, and just want action action action this might not really be the movie for you. Lots of the action scenes are seriously flawed. Hell, he's out of work, ruins his car, yet it just stays roadworthy in the next scenes. And why don't the baddies just shoot him down in that stand-off scene?

Five stars go to Rosanna Arquette, the other star is for that glorious Clint Eastwood-y moment when Scudder fires his gun after coming to Sarah's rescue. Cinematic perfection!

I hate it when people slag off a perfectly good film just because it dared to stray slightly away from the book it was based on. However, Lawrence Block, the author of the novel "Eight Million Ways To Die", has said that they seemed to make up the script for this as they went along and it certainly seems that way. Anyone who has read the Matt Scudder books will be disappointed that Hollywood chose to take the detective out of Manhattan and transplant him in their own back yard, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a bad film. After all, we've still got the great Jeff Bridges and Andy Garcia. Unfortunately, even they can't redeem this dog's dinner. Bridges is reportedly going to star as another one of Block's characters (Keller from Hit Man) if all goes to plan. Perhaps he still feels guilty. Don't let this film put you off of the books.

Will be recognized as one of the lost classics of the 80's. Bridges gives a great performance and really seems to understand what an alcoholic acts like. has THE best hangover scene of any movie. Andy Garcia made his first impression as the bad guy. Some real off the wall action scenes. This movie got a lot of bad press when it was released. i never understood why as I felt that it was one of Ashby's better later movies. I think Ashby himself will come under a reappraisal in the years to come with his movies being recognized as some coif the best. Some of his stars gave their best performances under his direction, i.e. Jack Nicholson (The Last Detail), Warren Beatty (Shampoo); Jon Voight (Coming Home) and Ruth Gordon.

I just recently heard a podcast of Quentin Tarantino raving about this movie. One of the few movies of the 80s that he feels were worth anything. After watching, this is clearly an inspiration to much of "True Romance" - which Tarantino wrote.

8 Million Ways to Die is about as subtle as hitting someone in the head with a frying pan. This is never more evident than in the opening scene and the climax. Both of those big moments feature "dramatic" confrontations that consist of guns being pointed while people incessantly shout at one another. And there is no content to the words yelled back and forth beyond repetition of various threats. I had to mute the film for a few minutes in the stand-off at the end, as it started to become too obnoxious for me. It seems pretty clear that they didn't have any dialogue written down for the actors, so they just kept screaming the same things louder and louder. This is an amateur's idea of how to raise tension in a scene, by merely raising the volume. It's a shame because there is some talent in the cast, but they are given little to work with. You'd think a movie with Jeff Bridges, Rosanna Arquette, and Andy Garcia (along with some other familiar faces) would be worth exploring but this is not at all.

The story of 8 Million Ways to Die is messy at best. Somehow, for no logical reason, the main character allows himself to get drawn deeper and deeper into a prostitution and drug plot. For some reason, he feels obligated to help these girls that have no good explanation for why they sought his assistance in the first place. It's treated like a big mystery, but from the moment you meet all the main characters, a 5-year-old could discern who was the main villain. While the specifics of his plot may be a bit surprising, they don't matter all that much. In fact, the few things they do in order to obfuscate who was behind the crimes in this movie didn't seem to have a logical purpose in the plot beyond a lame attempt to manufacture a mystery. There was literally only one scene where I had hope, for a fleeting instant, that 8 Million Ways to Die was actually going to be an interesting film that went down an unexpected path. Sadly, that turned out to be too much to hope for, and the movie is actually just a trainwreck that wasn't worth my time.

I saw this film a couple of nights ago. I only bothered as it was a Hal Ashby movie & I'm a big fan. He didn't let me down. Ok it's not a masterpiece or even amongst his best but it's still a powerfully intense thriller. Superficially similar to Scarface it is less showy, more personal & more convincing. Garcia's stylised gangster with his 'Gaudi' affectations almost unsettles the realism but is compulsive. Bridges turns in another superb performance as the hard-boiled, ex-cop battling with alcoholism & other demons. Ashby's Chandleresque take on 80's LA is familiar but beautifully vivid nevertheless. What raises it above the plethora of dark 80's thrillers is it's old-fashioned 70's values like complex character and troubled hero not in control of the narrative over fast-pace, shallow action & irony. To the post-Star Wars generation '8 Million Ways' may look meandering and indulgent but this says more about their limitations as film fans than it does about the film.

Jeff Bridges plays a great role as an alcoholic ex-cop. One of the better depictions of alcoholism in cinema; nobody does it better that Hal Ashby. He should have been allowed to finish up despite his addiction problems. The story could do with something and Andy Garcia's character is pretty annoying. California in the 80s is captured nicely; more a state of mind, than a destination, as the saying goes, lol. Its far from a failure: recommended!

I've seen this fine film many times. First back in the 80's when it came out, on copied VHS, with water colored screen, it looked better than your usual crime flick of that era. The story and the script are pretty usual but the acting and the feel was great. Jeff Bridges was in top form circa 1985, and by that I mean his acting form, although the movies he appeared in weren't that great. But he was, and Andy Garcia, who I first saw in this film, was no ordinary villain. He was evil incarnate behind the boy's face. Those two made the movie, their interaction and friction made sparks that lifted the story above ground and supporting cast held it together,(above all Rosanna Arquette and Randy Brooks), and it never looked like once great director Hal Ashby was in his heyday, was loosing it on the set. The movie delivered. It's no "Body Heat", but it's far better than most of silly, superficial, with "plot holes you can lead elephants through", popular movies of that decade. That's why I never understood it's poor rating. There are movies like this one, that are more than decent and they wallow in mediocrity while others, that didn't even deserve to be released, have been on DVD and even Blue-ray, long ago.

Years later, I had to dispose of my old battle weary VHS copy of this film, haven't seen it for almost 15 years,and than had a good chance to catch it on satellite. The years went by, but I still had the same emotions watching it, as I did more than 20 years ago. That's when you know that something is gotta be good. Give it a chance, you won't regret it.

Los Angeles police detective Jeff Bridges (as Matthew "Matt" Scudder) drinks on the job and use excessive force. In the opening scenes, he shoots a drug dealer, passes out, then loses his job. After speaking at an "Alcoholics Anonymous" meeting, Mr. Bridges receives a mysterious note requesting he help hooker Alexandra Paul (as Sunny) pull out of the sex trade...

Bridges is reluctant, but she pleads, "I don't wanna be a whore anymore!" Uncooperative pimp Randy Brooks (as Willie "Chance" Walker) doesn't let his ladies off easily. Bridges becomes even more acquainted with prostitute Rosanna Arquette (as Sarah) and her head customer Andy Garcia (as Angel Moldonado)...

"8 Million Ways to Die" is interesting as the last feature film directed by Hal Ashby, a great "actor's director" who lets this story get away. The improvisational quality adds realism - but you have to know when to stop, what to re-write, and how to edit. Witness, for example, the scene when Bridges meets Mr. Garcia in a parking for snow-cones. Something is wrong.

**** 8 Million Ways to Die (4/25/86) Hal Ashby ~ Jeff Bridges, Rosanna Arquette, Andy Garcia, Alexandra Paul

Though far from perfect, this film has enough little gems, to save it. The acting overcomes everything else, and a scene outside of the LA Coliseum between Jeff Bridges and a young Andy Garcia still makes me smile. Compare and contrast this film to "To Live and Die in LA" and you will see why we think Hal Ashby is our generations Howard Hawks. Of course Hawks was greater, but these days, so little stacks up with anything classic, that we can be forgiven for elevating our few originals like Ashby. Jeff Bridges is a movie star, and here he uses his gifts to pull this film from the 80's swamp. If I'm wrong about this film I apologize, but this is in my collection of 23 DVD's for a reason. From the architect "Gaudi" to truly GREAT henchmen, "8 Million ways To Die" is a VERY lovable flawed gem. In my other reviews, I would guarantee my taste. Here I am too much in love with this film to be a good jury member. I like this film, shame on me!

Let's forget for a moment that the producers took a perfectly good book and changed almost everything about the main characters, setting, and other miscellaneous details. Why DO they have to do that...?

The acting is terrible, the extended filming sequences where nothing is going on or being revealed, ugh! Don't waste your time.

OK. this is my first comment on this site so I'll try to make it good.

Eight million ways to die is simply an AMAZING movie. since the first time I saw it - i think it was in 91 - I bought the original VHS video and saw it many times again, especially during harsh times. This is The movie to see when you are down, and shows you how a man who has been at the bottom can gather himself, and bring on his best.

May be what i write seems to be intellectual stuff but actually the film is a great police movie with a perfect direction, and the message simply comes out of its own after watching it.

the cast is brilliant, this movie made me a Jeff Bridges fan, he is the best (4 times award nominee). Alexandra Paul, Andy Garcia, and Randy Brooks are excellent. Rosanna Arquette is a bit "weaker" than the others. she can't really compete with Paul and the male cast. She is a good actress but I am not sure she fits the hooker-junkie type.

What more can I say - my favorite movie ever.

Ho! yes: an unforgettable soundtrack by James Newton-Howard. one of his earlier works (may be its best !!). The soundtrack together with the opening scene showing the police car from the air is a master-piece.

...for Hal Ashby, it's something of a tragedy in the course of his career. At this point, to give some background, he wasn't getting the same kind of prime work he did in the 70s (Harold and Maude, Last Detail, Coming Home, Shampoo, Being There), this despite the fact that he won an Oscar as editor and nominated for director. After some low-budget comedies- and a less than great Rolling Stones movie- he took on this neo-noir co-scripted by Oliver Stone, and had a good cast in place with Jeff Bridges playing the on-off lush ex-detective, Rosanna Arquette as the call girl entrapped by cold, grinning/vicious pimp/pusher played by newcomer Andy Garcia. It seemed like a solid genre picture, one that could hopefully make a few bucks among the crowds looking for another fix of action and crime and romance and what-have-you.

As far as I know, I'm not sure why Ashby was then fired midway through by the producers. Maybe it was paranoia on the producers part (Ashby had an addiction to cocaine, ironically considering the subject matter of the film, and perhaps he was still on it during filming), or he did genuinely screw up somehow, but seeing that he wasn't part of the production all the way through, it casts the film in something of another light. Taking it as it is, there's some entertainment to be had with the tense dialog from Stone between Bridges and Garcia, and also some good chemistry between Bridges and Arquette. Hell, there's even a compelling undercurrent of redemption that's to be had with Bridges's Matthew coming back from bad alcoholic blackouts to track down the killer of the call girl Sonny.

But, and this is the crucial part, the film often has the feel as though it was seriously meddled with by the producers. This isn't to say Ashby's touches with his actors isn't there, as that's compelling enough, but the soundtrack in place makes this so painfully scream out 1980 THRILLER! that it boggles the mind like a hangover with Miami Vice. And there's even a section of the plot that, as perhaps with Matthew as well, blacks out right after Sonny's death. Certain other scenes don't feel like they had that touch of what came at least mostly naturally to Ashby, which was interesting editing. It would've been one thing if this was just another in a series of damned efforts from the director (apparently another film he made also had this happen to him), but given that it's also his final directed feature, albeit after the fact, adds to the shamefulness.

Does 8 Million Ways to Die deserve a director's cut? Maybe so, maybe not, as it stands it's a competent, mostly satisfying thriller. But we'll never know either way.

8 Million Ways To Die is a movie that very much feels like a movie. The way the movie's structered, the acting and primarily the dialogue all feel artificial and improvised-which it was. Oliver Stone wrote one draft based off the Lawrence Block book, then R Lance Hill was given the script to rewrite but the producers still weren't satisfied and handed the script over to famed script doctor Robert Towne. At this point the script was a mess and much of it was improvised. This is evident when watching the film. So many scenes have the trademarks of improv: chaotic situations with multiple actors screaming profanities and reiterating each other. The film is full of such scenes which extract all tension from the film and make the mediocre action that much worse. Between the intervals of chaos are overly sentimental slow scenes and alcoholism drama which is common in Block's books(and film adaptations) and don't add anything except boredom. Bridges and Garcia are decent in their roles when they aren't completely overacting and are a redeeming factor in the film.

Even for a sub par seedy,LA cop thriller this is inferior and one to stay away from with all its 8 million flaws.