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<\/p>\nNeo-noir can be applied to this updated attempt at the private eye formula in which a just-getting-by, recently separated, alimony-taxed father gets a sweet gig not only with a slight expense account, but rekindles a paused romance from his days at Berkeley.<\/p>\n
One of the reasons many film fans may have an affinity for L.A.-shot productions where the camera is always on location and embraces grimy alleys, out of the way plots, and concrete progress are the myriad TV series from the 70s and 80s set in and shot around the expansive city.<\/p>\n
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The films are time capsules of an era gone, if not the busy and the marginalized areas where everyday people travelled to & fro. A case in point is an electronics shop where The Big Fix<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s private dick Moses Wine (Richard Dreyfuss) checks out a lead. It\u2019s the kind of surplus shack that\u2019s vanished from many cities \u2013 Toronto lost its Active Surplus in 2013 \u2013 with its character-laden innards of hand-painted signs, unkempt corners, and the odd hunk of tech conspicuously parked to the side, like a massive oscilloscope that\u2019s plainly visible in the background as Wine queries a clerk.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the first (and thus far only) film appearance of Wine, the chief character from Roger L. Simon\u2019s trio of Moses Wine novels. Dreyfuss no doubt loved the character \u2013 it\u2019s a fine performance \u2013 and perhaps like Simon, felt the potential for an occasional sequel was doable, much in the way Marlowe<\/strong> (1967) feels like an attempted launch that similarly tried to update the private eye formula to hip & swinging 60s California with sardonic James Garner as Raymond Chandler\u2019s iconic Philip Marlowe.<\/p>\n