The Big Easy (R)
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This was released in 1987, but I didn't see it until 2020. (I watched it one night because my Facebook memories for that day said I had bought the DVD one year ago.) It's something I've always kind of wanted to see, but now that I have, it's hard for me to say whether or not I really liked it at all. Parts of it must have been okay, but other parts I didn't really care for. I do want to mention that I've always sort of associated this movie with Sea of Love, which came out a couple years after this. I'm not sure if I had any reason for that other than Ellen Barkin being in both movies. But now that I've watched it, I find it kind of interesting that John Goodman was in both movies, too.

Anyway, there's this New Orleans police lieutenant named Remy McSwain, who gets involved with a state D.A. named Anne Osborne (Barkin) while investigating a series of murders of mobsters. All the evidence points to a drug war between rival gangs, but eventually it becomes clear that something else is going on. That's pretty much all I can say about the plot, but really the movie is more about the characters. I think Remy is meant to be charming, but I didn't find him so. And at first it seemed like Anne didn't, either. In fact it seemed to me that she felt he kept crossing lines she didn't want crossed. That is, up until he kissed her for the first time (which I saw no indication she would have wanted him to do). But apparently she didn't mind, because the very next scene is them having sex (and I'm never really a fan of sex scenes, even when they make sense, which this one didn't, to me). Meanwhile, it seems like every cop in New Orleans is on the take, including Remy, who also enjoys various other "perks" of the job. And Anne does not approve (as well she shouldn't). Honestly, the best thing I could say about Remy is that there were cops in the movie who were dirtier than him. So it wasn't quite possible for me to truly root for him either in his job or his relationship with Anne. And that's all I can think to say.