CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Reaper Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, who'd previously appeared in the In-Laws, team up for some reason in a film that's two-thirds a remake of Double Indemnity, and one-third a silly safe-cracking caper film. I don't know that I've ever seen Peter Falk embarrass himself this badly in any film. Falk has no buddy-film chemistry with Arkin, who seems to want to take the next taxi off this picture. After the Double Indemnity-style insurance caper goes off the rails, around the hour mark, Falk and Arkin decide to rob the company chairman, or his safe, or something. It doesn't fit together, none of the characters' motivations seem reasonable, and the film ends by fizzling out with a deus ex machina. It's a shame that Cassavetes couldn't have had a more distinguished swan song than this mishmash. I've wasted 93 minutes more egregiously, but not lately.

ksf-2 Total parody of "Double Indemnity", with some added twists. The awesome, hilarious team of A. Arkin and P. Falk are together again, seven years after the under-rated "In-Laws". Beverly D'Angelo is "Blanche", the Barbara Stanwyck wife, looking to knock off the husband. Arkin is "Leonard", the insurance salesman, trying to put his sons through Yale. Falk is "Steve", the husband. Robert Stack is Leonard's boss, who refuses to help with the college bills. If you're a big fan of Falk and/or Arkin, you'll LOVE this film; they spend the whole time trying to outdo each other in the over-acting department. Also keep an eye out for Richard Libertini, also from the In-Laws; others will know him as the guru in All of Me (Edwina, Back in Bowl ) and Charles Durning (Tootsie). Written (copied/parodied ?) by Andrew Bergman, who certainly knew comedy... he had written the original In-Laws, Blazing Saddles, Soapdish, and Fletch! Directed by John Cassevetes, who had done a bunch of stuff with Peter Falk already. Seems like quite a departure for Cassevetes... he had always done serious, pretty rough dramas. Fun stuff. On DVD. Never see this one shown on TV for some reason.

theowinthrop After seeing a review of this film's best remembered sequence on Channel 5 news back in 1986 I went out to see it. It was fortunate, that I did because BIG TROUBLE did not have a long or successful movie box office run. And with some reason.In 1979, when Falk and Arkin made THE IN-LAWS, that film was just a tidal wave of fun. It seemed that movies had serendipitously put together two actors who played off each other very well. But no mutual property turned up to put them (hopefully with Richard Libertini again) through their paces. Then came BIG TROUBLE.It is funny at points, but it is also less amusing for some plot problems that did not occur in THE IN-LAWS. In the earlier film, Korpett (Arkin) was a successful, if timid (or staid), dentist living in suburbia. As such, his inter-involvement with his new in-law Ricardo (Falk) shakes the foundations of his entire world. A similar situation is in BIG TROUBLE, but it is more serious - for some reason - here. Leonard Hoffman (Arkin) is an insurance salesman for a firm owned by Winslow (Robert Stack) and serving under O'Mara (Charles Durning). He has a wife (Valerie Curtin) and three sons who are triplets, musical prodigies, and need to begin expensive education to enhance their musical career potentials. Arkin can't pay for all this. He makes a decent living, but not a really good one to support the triplets and their goals. He is constantly defeated by his bosses or by his timidity from getting the raises or promotions he deserves. He gets a call from a Mrs. Blanche Rickey (Beverly D'Angelo - the name, by the way, is a joke based on Baseball Team manager/owner BRANCH Rickey) to set an appointment to discuss life insurance with her and her husband Steve (Falk). Arkin goes and finds a suspicious set up but one that he has to accept.Falk's Steve Rickey is all smiles and agreements. He is the direct opposite of the negative Mr. Dietrichson in DOUBLE INDEMNITY, who is the husband slated for murder for profit by his wife Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck) and salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray). Falk is fully willing to sign a life insurance policy with Arkin's company that includes a double indemnity clause. This is unusual, but Arkin needs the commission because of his three sons. So he sells the unusually large policy. Within a week D'Angelo reports that Falk has died in an accident. Arkin rushes to see her at her lawyer's office, and meets the doctor (Libertini) as well as her bald headed, mustached lawyer. But a frightened Arkin realizes the lawyer is Rickey in disguise.Soon, though plots twists, Arkin finds himself tied to trying to get the policy paid off, despite heavy suspicions by Durning and Stack about it. The resolution of the insurance matter, Arkin's future with his job, and the heavy tuition of the three sons is at the conclusion of the film.Now, the issue in this film was that Arkin's character's financial and social situation was not firmly settled due to ensuing educational expenses that he could not afford. Hoffman is not as stable in his social role as Kornpett was. Instead the audience is sorry for Arkin's plight with his three sons and his no-where job, but because it is sorry the threat of Falk's plans is not as funny when they explode in Arkin's face. The resolution of THE IN-LAWS (a last minute rescue) was pretty good, but there was something slap-dash about the way BIG TROUBLE ended. Here the plotting of Falk and D'Angelo gets so out of hand that Durning is tied up and imprisoned for the last half hour of the film. It is by a sheer fluke at the end that things right themselves out. But the rushing through or stitching together of parts wrecked the conclusion.It is amusing at it's best moments (the Norwegian Sardine Liquor sequence was incredibly funny - and remains so: it was shown in that film review as a clip on Channel 5 by Stewart Klein the film critic). But few other moments were that funny. I would say it is worthy to look at, but THE IN-LAWS is far and away the better film.

David Knell (dknell) I worked on this film in 1986, in a scene that was ultimately left on the cutting room floor. When I auditioned for the film, I met with the director, who was in fact, Andrew Bergman (credited solely as the writer). Several weeks went by before I actually worked, and by that time, Bergman had been replaced by John Cassevetes. What I was told at the time, was that Bergman had been fired, and that Falk, a friend of Cassevetes, recommended that Cassevetes come in to finish the job. I don't know how much of the film was already in the can at that point, but I know that Cassevetes changed the script a bit. In the scene I was involved in, Falk and Arkin go into a hardware store to buy dynamite to blow up a building (An insurance office, as I recall). I played the Hardware store clerk. I remember the script being pretty much thrown out the window, and improvising much of the dialog, which included Falk explaining that the dynamite was need for a luau. "My Wife," he said, "makes a suckling pig, that'll knock your eye out. First you baste it––" "With clarified butter," Arkin chimes in. "Then blast the sh*t of it with dynamite." As the clerk, I apologize that the store doesn't carry dynamite, and end up selling them a hundred pounds of charcoal briquettes instead. Funny. And you will likely never see this scene. Ah well.