Classic Film Review: Hackman’s a Working Class CIA Joe taking care of “Company Business”

Not every actor’s all that picky about her or his wardrobe. But the great ones are.

Glenn Ford didn’t find a character until he picked out just the right hat. Piper Laurie would fuss over what purse somebody she was playing would carry.

The late Gene Hackman? Hats and ties would tell the story.

So a movie about a CIA agent dodging “the Russians” and “The Company” in post-Berlin Wall Berlin might demand a trench coat. But Hackman always gave his characters with working class origins a tie tied entirely too short. And the hats were something you might see on your average New York cabbie of the day.

When he played high priced lawyers, presidents and such, the tie was normal length. But for a Popeye Doyle (“The French Connection” movies) or ex-CIA agent Sam Boyd in “Company Business,” the tie was short and the cap was baldspot-hiding working class.

The film, a serio-comic cat-and-mouse chase through Berlin and Paris, probably seemed a safe bet in 1990-91. Nicholas Meyer, who scripted “Time after Time” and whose light writing and directing touch saved the early “Star Trek” movies, cooked up a sort of “Hopscotch” comic thriller/working vacation in Europe for the Oscar-winning Hackman, paired up with Russian dancer/sex symbol turned actor Mikhail Baryshnikov.

But even if the film gave Hollywood the sense that veteran villain Kurtwood Smith (“Robocop”) could pull off perpetually PO’d in comic strokes, setting him up for “Hearts and Souls,” “To Die For,” TV’s “Big Wave Dave’s” and eventually “That ’70s Show,” “Company Business” barely manages a chuckle.

The set pieces are cleverly handled, the action beats play and the picture moves along at a nice clip. And Hackman — 61 when this caem out — is in fine form, giving better than the whole enterprise probably deserved. But if this is one of the forgotten titles of Hackman’s last decade on screen, there’s a reason.

We meet “old guy” Sam as he’s pulling a documents heist the Old School way — busting into headquarters in black mask and jumpsuit, dodging the guards, rappelling down a wall from an upper story of the glass-encased promontory to make his getaway.

The next day’s visit to his handlers gives away the game. He was stealing industrial secrets — cosmetics formulas. And a nerd in the lobby, also waiting to see the corporate types coveting this cache, got the same info simply by “hacking,” with the old guy tricking the kid to save face and his payment for the job.

When his former employers summon him to Langley with their old “Who do you like in the Fifth?” (a horse racing cliche) phone call, Sam’s first question is the only one that matters.

“Why take the battleship Missouri out of mothballs?”

Sam’s a Cold Warrior, and the Cold War is over. The Berlin Wall’s down. And we’ve already heard the CIA brain trust (Kurtwood Smith, Terry O’Quinn and others) gripe that they “HATE old guys” like Sam.

But there’s one more “exchange,” a long-imprisoned U2 pilot they can get for a chunk of cash and a Russian spy they’ve held for seven years. Post Iran-Contra, this bit of spookwork has to be off-the-books, as they’re using a Colombian drug lord’s cash and they don’t want Congress coming after them and Sam, who’d be an “Oliver North without all the medals” if caught.

Sam dutifully accepts the cash, fetches the Russian Pyotr Grushenko (Baryshnikov) and gets him to Berlin.

The banter is mostly dull and ill-considered, as the eagle-eyed and memory like a steel-trap Sam can’t recall the name of the vodka that the Russian keeps recommending.

Berlin’s sex district would make a great hide-out when things go haywire, and Meyer tries to find some fun in that. A transgender bar with a version of Marlene Dietrich singing “See What the Boys in the Backroom Will Have” (from “Destry Rides Again”) is about as funny as all the gay references get.

Baryshnikov wouldn’t show a lot of comic flair until his last significant role, a story arc on “Sex and the City,” later in the decade. Lines muttered about his reluctance to “go home” — “Who do you think I am, E.T.?” — fall flat.

Smith and O’Quinn take sturns sputtering “It’s no longer fashionable to ransom hostages with Colombian drug money!” and “What’re you trying to do, restart the COLD WAR?”

The American Sam may crack that “We still have Fidel,” when it comes to international boogeymen for the country to obsess over. Petulent Pyotr could still crack back “So do WE.”

Not a knee-slapper in the lot.

Screen icon Hackman’s workmanlike turn holds the picture together, as far as that goes. But in a movie that tries to work up a fine comic fury over Reagan/Bush crimes and criminality, and that proves to be an exercise in futility. Nobody was hearing that.

The next year, Bill Clinton would win the White House because the clueless patrician Republican Bush didn’t know the price of a gallon of milk.

And lines about how “The Japanese own your whole f—–g country” may be reminders of how long “The Japanese Century” lasted about ten years. But for a viewer today it just underscores that “The American Century” is certainly over and with half the country voting to emulate Russiam Cold War action comedies have lost any cachet they once had.

Rating: PG-13, bloody gunplay, nudity,

Cast: Gene Hackman, Mikhail Baryshnikov,
Géraldine Danon, Terry O’quinn, Oleg Rudnik, Daniel van Bargen and Kurtwood Smith

Credits: Scripted and directed by Nicholas Meyer. An MGM release on Tubi, other streamers.

Running time: 1:38