Only now does it occur to me... I'm pretty sure that once upon a time in the late '80s, somebody was watching a Harrison Ford double-feature: WITNESS and WORKING GIRL. They were left with the sensation that they wanted to remake WITNESS, but they also wanted to see Melanie Griffith continue doing her WORKING GIRL schtick. So they pitched the following: How 'bout WITNESS, except instead of Harrison Ford we have Melanie Griffith, and instead of the Amish we have the Brooklyn Hasidim?
Furthermore, it's directed by Sidney Lumet, who I have to imagine was a hired gun to give it "gritty NYC flavor." The problem is, instead of the next SERPICO or PRINCE OF THE CITY or DOG DAY AFTERNOON we have something a little closer to THE WIZ.
Well, if Club ZAP! is in a movie, it can't be all bad
So we have Melanie Griffith as a hard-boiled hot-doggin' cop who is totally subjected to the classic "next time you act like such a goddamned maverick I'm gonna need your badge and gun on my desk!" speech
only she's making no effort whatsoever to appear tough n' gritty, opting for the "Marilyn Monroe-via-BODY DOUBLE" baby voice throughout. Which is frankly kinda great.
Anyway, there have been some murders in the Flatbush Hasidic Jewish neighborhood, so she's sent in to go undercover (!) by a screenplay that A. thinks it's definitely going to win some Oscars, B. is dedicated to the idea that Melanie will learn a lot from the Hasidim and the Hasidim will learn a lot from Melanie, and C. really wants to shoehorn a bodice-ripping romance with a rabbi in here somewhere. This is obviously a recipe for success, if by success you mean alienating the religious community you are attempting to depict as well as causing a variety of audience members to snort their beverages through their noses. Allow me to demonstrate what I mean:
They're a regular Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant, aren't they. And that's right, her name is "Detective Eden"... like the garden from that book
She shore is a sassy shiksa
First, note Mia Sara (FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF, LEGEND, TIMECOP) playing Hasid. Second, note that Melanie Griffith's character, when informed that someone "died in the camps," does not know what the camps are.
HEY WHAT DO YOU MEAN "YOU PEOPLE"
This is just poetry, a Song of Songs if you will
If FLEABAG brought us "Hot Priest Summer," truly A STRANGER AMONG US brings us "Lukewarm Rabbi Summer." The crux of it is that she doesn't even want to date him, it's just kind of an experiment to prove a point about repression or something
Along the way, in attempts to summon some New York-realness, we have young James Gandolfini as a low-level mobster:
John Pankow (TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.) as a likably dorky detective:
use of the brilliant catchphrase "Okey-dokey":
This whole thing is so absurd that you end up being slightly more puzzled than offended. Also, they totally tried to sell it like it was from the same genre as BASIC INSTINCT:
a desperate early '90s decision that tells me they knew they had a real winner on their hands.
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