Just perfect...

A Brilliant Conflict

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

A somewhat typical and halfway decent neo-noir in the vein of Chinatown and Night Moves, though perhaps some wouldn't include it since the protagonist (played by Burt Reynolds) is a police detective. Still, it plays out very much like those kinds of mysteries. Reynolds is investigating the death of a teenage girl. It seems a pretty open-and-shut suicide case, but the girl's father (a really nasty Ben Johnson) insists that he's going to find out more. Reynolds and his partner (Paul Winfield) try to keep him out of trouble. Meanwhile, Reynolds is dealing with his complicated girlfriend situation. Catherine Deneuve plays his high-class whore girlfriend. The film also stars Eileen Brennan, Eddie Albert, Ernest Borgnine and Catherine Bach (Daisy Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard!). Robert Englund (Freddy Kreuger) also shows up as a liquor store robber late in the film. The story's okay, but kind of slow moving.

This is a pretty bad attempt at film noir and it also tries to be like Dirty Harry and fails. This was directed by Robert Aldrich and it's a shame since he directed a lot of great movies like Vera Cruz, Attack and The Dirty Dozen. Burt Reynolds plays a lieutenant who's girlfriend is a prostitute, played by Catherine Deneuve, and his partner like to beat up suspects. A young prostitute is found dead on the beach and they think it's a suicide but the girl's father, played by Ben Johnson, thinks otherwise and tries to investigate himself. Ernest Borgnine plays Reynolds boss who wants the case closed and Eddie Albert plays a lawyer who might have something to do the case. It's a pretty crappy movie and the ending just does not work whatsoever.

Great cast at the mercy of a pitiful script involving an unhappy Los Angeles cop, living with a call-girl, dreaming of a life far away from the city noise and squalor; sub-plot about a young woman's murder/suicide is just fatuous padding, and Burt Reynolds spends most of his time staring off into space (perhaps dreaming of another existence himself) or smirking into the camera. A real bummer, wasting the talents of lovely Catherine Deneuve, miscast as the prostitute. One thing you can say, it's aptly titled: the screenplay itself is pure hustle, parlaying 1940s clichés and characters into a "modern-day" scenario which bears no resemblance to reality. Supporting players Ben Johnson, Eddie Albert, Eileen Brennan, Paul Winfield and Ernest Borgnine struggle with thankless parts. * from ****

the stunt danny d describes was not in the movie hustle, with burt reynolds! the stunt he describes was in another burt reynolds movie titled SHARKY'S MACHINE. in addition the stuntman wasn't david estridge, it was dar robinson.