dragonkazul Oddly enough, when it's a dark crime caper with some comedic/absurdist elements, the movie actually works pretty well. There are stakes, people are getting killed, and there are Nazis being evil...there are some genuinely exciting sequences in this movie.Then Dan Akyroyd's "Multiple Personality Disorder" rears it's ugly head again and the whole thing turns into a farce. You think his impressions of pop culture characters are supposed to be funny...and they are... until (here's the spoiler) you learn that he developed this MPD after a gang captured him and tortured him so severely he almost died.Yes, that is his actual back-story in this movie.How are you supposed to laugh at that? If they'd played this as a mostly straight movie with some jokes thrown in, it would have been fine. If Ellis had been what he was originally presented as: a brilliant detective with a broken mind trying to claw his way back into functionality, that would have worked. Hey, when Dan Akryoyd isn't mugging, he actually gives a pretty touching performance. This whole thing would have gone down as a dark but functional crime flick.Bur someone decided this had to be a "comedy." A comedy with Nazis, torture, and murder in it. And that killed the flick.Still, somethings have to be seen to be believed.

david-sarkies This is a great movie. Generally I find American Comedies dull, but this is seriously great. The wit is very clever: my favourite being the license for sex, and some of the slapstick is quite amusing. The plot is not deep but the movie is what I call a fun movie.The movie stars Gene Hackman, who plays far better bad guys that good guys, though in this movie he was good. Then there is Dan Ackroyd who simply steals the show with his antics. Ackroyd is a very good actor as he can take on different roles. Early in his career he seemed to play simply comic roles, such as the Blues Brothers, but recently he has taken a little more serious approach to his roles, such as the assassin in Grosse Point Blanc. Loose Cannons has him playing a cop with multiple personalities, and some of them, such as the Road Runner, are a hoot.As for attitudes, I guess it deals mainly with tolerance for those who are mentally disabled. Ackroyd's character is disabled due to a painful experience in the past, and Hackman puts in effort to actually help Ackroyd return to his job and overcome his experience. It played a little part of the film, but not much. Moreso it was an action/comedy flick.The one thing that concerned me was that the title had little to do with the movie. A loose cannon is somebody who does not take part in the team, somebody who is not under control and goes about doing their own thing. Obviously it comes from the times of wooden sailing ships in that if a cannon was not secure, it could roll all over the ship and possibly cause quite a lot of damage. These guys did not seem to be loose cannons, rather they were involved in a case and were doing what they could to solve it. There was no big police cover up and their superiors were not ordering them to desist from the case. Other than that, which is minor, but I tend to drag up minor things, it was a good movie.

elshikh4 When Gene Hackman and Dan Aykroyd are joined for a buddy action comedy, then it's thrilling. However, after seeing (Loose Cannons), I discovered that that early notion is the sole thrilling thing about that movie at all ! The main premise was teaming up a Sherlock Holmes with multiple personality disorder, and a smiley Dirty Harry. That's good. Though, the result has no appeal or taste. Yes, it's fairly a mindless action just to entertain, but the try of making a comedy, a very lousy one, then agglutinating it to the main movie to sell it as an action comedy; was so failed and deformed huge part of the whole thing. The script treats the matter of Aykroyd's disease in strangely contradicting way. Sometimes it's a sad illness where verses by Dylan Thomas are said, and sometimes it's a cheap tool to make Aykroyd imitate Road Runner ! Well, apparently that was tensely made. Not only this, the from-haters-to-friends line between the 2 leads is lost after their first conversation in Hackman's car. They seemed later accepting each other fine, thus so long for a running ironies or dramatic changes. The dialog is deeply uninspired. Noting is comic or even right about it. Look at scene like the one in which Hackman talks to his colleague / the black policewoman, or the one where he meets Ronny Cox for the first time, or when he talks about the order in the universe through his car's ignition; they're bland scenes with no funny thing to come up with or important info to inform. The comic situations are none. The multiple personality disorder leads to some poor sketches and terrible impersonations. OH MY GOD, Aykroyd did his Razzie worthy performance there; the Road Runner in specific was his, and this movie's, worst bottom for sure ! Some moments are just weird. For instance Hackman's first scene, it never tells us how come that 2 detectives are sent out on a disturbance-of-the-peace call to an apartment ? For another : we know that Hackman's flat is burned just like that! We weren't allowed to see that at the least. OK. They're not weird, they're dumb !Aykroyd was loud and very silly (Where was Jim Carry, or – as one of the IMDb reviewers asked smartly – Robin Williams?). Hackman was fooling around, for making a comedy (with the wrong material)?, for getting a job?, I don't know. It's official that the 1980s was his lowest decade. Moreover, both of Hackman and Aykroyd had no chemistry with each other and looked chubby. There is no rest, since this script doesn't have anything to present on the level of characters further than its 2 leads ! So what could be positive here? It's easy : seeing the 60 year old Hackman playing a play on Martin Riggs, of Lethal Weapon movies, as a crazy super cop. Although this movie wasn't a bright point in his career, but he was a bright point in this movie. I loved seeing him in action, and in that red sweater. Aside from that, positive things happen accidentally and rapidly : The moment when Hackman had to play Captain Kirk to solve a crisis. The trick which the leads used to bluff the bad guys in the train station. The design of Dom DeLuise's cane as a secret bottle of wine. 2 lines between the nurse and Hackman near the end "I'd rather set my head on fire and have it put out with a sledgehammer" / "I'd like to see that actually!". And thank god that the action was vivid; it is what makes this movie watchable or in fact bearable !Director Bob Clark is always related to the "Razzie awards", "Turkey of the year movie", more than once with Rhinestone (1984), Turk 182! (1985), Baby Geniuses (1999), and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004). Some may say he isn't a bad director. Though, he undoubtedly has a bad scripts fetish, and it shows. That – with the best techniques – still makes a bad director ! Loose Cannons is made by loose cannons who lost a good chance to make a talented action comedy. They're so dry people who made so dry movie. Now to a big annoying problem this movie causes, which is its last lines. The 2 cops are hired by the Mossad, and they'll have "a training in Sinai desert". For your information, Sinai is an Egyptian land, not Israeli. Israel did invade it in 1967, and occupy it for 6 years, however Egypt went to war to free its stolen land in 1973, and succeeded, by battles of war and – later – peace, in regaining it completely in 1982. So when this 1990 movie says something like that, then whether their makers are ignorant or braggart !

vhs1999 Let me tell you that i haven't had such a good laugh in ages. I saw this film last night for the first time and it was hilarious from start to finish. Paring up Dan akroyd and Gene hackman i think is one of the best team up in film I've actually scene, to the jokes,the action and the actual characters themselves. Having the plot about the Germans and having it set in Washington was pretty stupid i have to admit but it was all part how the story came together. Both the lead stars you rarely see these days due to idiots like eg(jack black,will Farrel) taking all the air time. This is the sort of comedy that the younger generation of today should be watching instead of the crap thats out these days. Well im glad these old films like this still exist.