Hickey & Boggs
Bill Cosby, Robert Culp
Directed by Robert Culp
Originally released 1972
MGM Home Entertainment 2011
111 minutes
Hickey and Boggs are no relation whatsoever to Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott, the characters Robert Culp and Bill Cosby played in I Spy. This is a noir thriller with lots of gunplay and no comic relief (aside from one phone conversation the Cosby character has with his kid). There is something very 70s cop TV about this big screen movie. Hickey and Boggs is one of the titles in the MGM Limited Edition Collection on demand DVD offering. The print used here is pristine.
A man hires private eyes Hickey and Boggs to find a woman named Mary Jane Bowers. The broke and disillusioned detectives soon find they are being taken for fools. A local crime kingpin (Robert Mandan of Soap) is also looking for the woman. She has something to do with a missing half million dollars or so that has started to resurface in thousand dollar bills.
Hickey and Boggs find themselves caught between the bad guys looking for Mary Jane and the cops who are getting annoyed that everyone the two private eyes talk to ends up dead soon after that.
Things get darker when the case hits close to home for Hickey (Bill Cosby).
The showdown is a bit much but it does solve everything.
Hickey and Boggs is a pretty decent if a bit long thriller. Because Cosby and Culp are the stars, it is an interesting addition to any noir thriller collection.