Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

westernone It would seem that this film would be banking on residual affection for the action spy series of the sixties, "I SPY", where Culp and Cosby played bright, funny pals that joked and wisecracked their way through the cloak-and-dagger adventures. But here, they make no attempt to revive that devil-may-care camaraderie, and apparently thinking they needed to be taken seriously as action stars, play nothing for laughs. They don't kid around at all, in fact they never even smile or get emotional one way or another. They're sullen and tired and cynical with none of the chemistry that worked so well before.It's not like they're hostile to each other, more like indifference, like somebody you work with, but never have any personal stake in. Maybe they thought these characters would be more realistic, but the fantastic situations are not. Several times big exploding catastrophes take place in what should be very public places, yet no one's around. The plot is convoluted and unexciting. Ifyou went in because you liked Cup and Cosby, you'll be disappointed in this downer.

DKosty123 There are several things which are attractive from this film.The pairing of Robert Culp (also directing) with Bill Cosby again. They were very good on televisions I Spy and are just as good here.The nostalgic look at the LA Colesium with footage of a 1972 Rams-Falcons game including Rams Punter Pat Studstill and some vintage Dodger Footage, Culp sneaking in a line from one of the female co-stars telling Cosby he has a bad sense of humor.The action is pretty good and the photography are strong. The plot while predictable is OK. There is a lot of gunfire but not as much blood as the Clint Eastwood films of the same period.Film noir from the 1970's.

ianlouisiana Los Angeles never looked more beautiful,nor more corrupt.White and shimmering in the heat but dark deep in its soul.The city of the fallen angels - as James Ellroy has it - hides its decay beneath a glittering carapace,a muddied area where down - at - heel private detectives like Hickey and Boggs swirl around in a vortex of robbers,whores,pimps,cops and hangers - on of every persuasion.Also - rans in the P.I. business,H & B are hired to trace a missing woman,an assignment that turns out to be not quite what it seems. Mr Robert Culp directed this movie and co - stars in it with Mr Bill Cosby.It has the edgy,urban feel of the 90s cop movie,with racial and sexual politics heavily featured,a genre that was to become commonplace two decades later.A fine script by Walter Hill helps,but Mr Culp must take the lion's share of the credit for producing a movie that is enthralling,exciting and thought - provoking as well as being entertaining.He and Mr Cosby display the casual but deep - rooted amity and familiarity that takes years of working together to develop.They have plenty of good throwaway lines but they're not the Abbot and Costello of private eyes,more the Hawkeye and Trapper. "Hickey and Boggs" is a movie where the sights and even sounds of the city become like a character who has no lines but whose presence is clearly felt.Not since Chandler - who professed to hate it and considered it had "all the personality of a paper cup" - had L.A. exercised such an influence on a movie.A few years later "Chinatown" would best it,but Mr Culp got there first.Was he just lucky with his first movie?Well,he never got to test golfer Sam Torrance's retort when he was described as "lucky" - "The more I win,the luckier I seem to get" said the Greatest Living Scotsman.Mr Culp,on the other hand,made just the one movie.And he did it supremely well.I don't think luck had anything to do with it.

inspectors71 In the grand scheme of movie things, there are probably a million movies that will be considered better than Hickey and Boggs, but this almost-missed 1972 crime drama that reunites Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, the two stars of the popular TV series, I Spy, has more than enough golden flecks to justify looking for it on Amazon.Al Hickey (Cosby) and Frank Boggs (Culp) are two down-on-their-luck private dicks who share the honors of being fired by the LAPD and having very little to fall back upon . Although the plot sounds hopelessly clichéd (the loot from a bloody armored car robbery resurfaces in LA, and a melting-pot of gangster/corporate suits, black revolutionaries, Mexican immigrants, murderous-but-not- brilliant hit-men, and hysterically angry detectives come after the all-but-divorced Hickey and the alcoholic, pole-dancer-addicted Boggs) screenwriter Walter Hill and director Culp make the viewer care about these two lost and lonely working stiffs who used to be proud, but who are now desperately threadbare.I Spy was light and fluffy. Hickey and Boggs bombed at the box office because viewers were expecting a more of the same, a dramedy, but there's damned little humor in this film. Yet, the performances of and the chemistry between Bill Cosby and Robert Culp are so very believable that the audience is left jittery from the suspense of where and how the "torpedoes" will strike again. On a personal level, Hickey's marriage to the beautiful Rosalind Cash is a shambles, and Boggs has all but given up fighting his addictions to booze, girls, and mid-sixties Ford Thunderbirds.It's so palpable, so frantic for these men as they try to make a buck, defend themselves from the baddies and the goodies, and get past the professional and personal chaos they have helped to create.There is an excruciating moment when Hickey's mother-in-law, the always watchable Isabel Sanford, stands on the porch of her daughter's house, the site of the latest "torpedo" attack, and verbally disembowels Cosby--while Cosby's daughter desperately tries to keep her sanity by mowing the lawn--and you can't quite hear Sanford's anguished, angry voice over the highway noise. The look of defeat on Cosby's face is his character writ small.Meanwhile, Culp sits in a strip club, destroying his liver, and is almost in tears as a dancer with dead eyes flirts with him. Like Cosby, he is alone and vanquished. Even the strippers don't care.Although the ending is stolidly predictable, the viewer is relieved to see that there is some hope for Al and Frank. There is a lot of shooting, with everyone from the Panther-types to a thoroughly vicious Michael Moriarty either eviscerated or burned to a crisp. They walk off down the beach, slogging through the sand, and, hopefully, they will find a way to repair their lives.Yeah, Hickey and Boggs is an artsy downer, but, as I said before, there are enough moments of style and substance in this underestimated film noir to make it both watchable and, to the patient viewer, emotionally accessible. There is a line in Hickey and Boggs, after a nasty firefight in the LA Coliseum, where Culp, instead of saying something pithy or sarcastic about the torpedoes, simply fumes, "I gotta get a bigger gun. I can't hit a damned thing."That's a little gold fleck right there.