One of those "stick with it" kind of movies. After the success of the universally entertaining THE LONGEST YARD, director Robert Aldrich reteams with Burt Reynolds in a steamy/gritty cop melodrama that takes a little while to get going.Reynolds is Phil Gaines, a bitter, worldweary detective who, living with a high priced prostitute, doesn't live the typical law and order existence. After the dead body of a drugged young girl turns up on the beach, Gaines and his partner, Paul Winfield's Belgrave, write it off as suicide. But a stubborn, unglued war veteran father, played with a frantic energy by Ben Johnson as Marty, can't let go.Overlong scenes where Burt and hooker girlfriend Nicole – played by Catherine Deneuve – involved in tedious bouts of pillow talk (especially during the first ten minutes) distract from the real stuff: Gaines and Belgrave forced to take the investigation seriously as Marty (the father) sneaks around a local mob-run strip club for answers, stalking a seedy high profile lawyer played by YARD villain Eddie Albert.Essential action scenes are thrown in whenever necessary, and yet beneath the surface is character-study of a cop discovering the truth of a victim who, having been involved in stripping and hardcore porn, wasn't very innocent to begin with. Conversations where Reynolds and Winfield discuss the validity of the case and the futility of life, while delving into pop culture movies and music, are the highlight.A clean-shaven Reynolds, a few years shy of the signature mustache and mainstream stardom, is fitfully forlorn as a man lost in the Film Noir haze, and director Robert Aldrich makes even the slower parts interesting except those conversations with Deneuve: As a love interest, she's just not interesting.And despite a tacked-on tragic finale, this cop/melodrama feels more like reading than watching – a good thing provided you won't be able to put this down once it picks up.

Burt Reynolds plays Phil Gaines, a middle-aged California cop plagued by a midlife crisis. His wife is seeing someone else, and he's in love with Nicole (lovely Catherine Deneuve), a prostitute. His job as cop entails endless frustrations not only with criminals but also with victim relatives, two of whom are Marty Hollinger (Ben Johnson) and Marty's wife Paula (Eileen Brennan), whose daughter was found dead on the beach. And the case is Phil's to investigate.Some viewers will object to the film's admittedly slow pace. And the film does have a problem, but I don't think it's the pace. I think the problem here is that the script doesn't give us enough reason to care about Phil Gaines and his life as a cop. That he dates a prostitute does not help. There's also insufficient back-story about him. Except for his love life, we really don't get to know him very well, certainly not well enough to foreshadow the film's implausible double climax.Perhaps the script's biggest flaw, however, is its lack of focus. Too much screen time is given to the Marty Hollinger character and his silly efforts to solve the case of his daughter's death, on his own. Whose story is this: Phil Gaines' or Marty Hollinger's?But "Hustle" is not a bad movie, really it isn't. The casting and acting are fine. I thought Eileen Brennan especially gave a memorable performance. The film's production design is good. And color cinematography is terrific. I really liked those outdoor scenes on the deck where Phil and Nicole chat about life and love, with "Yesterday When I Was Young" playing in the background. Such scenes convey a melancholy, nostalgic mood, consistent with Phil's midlife crisis.Although the screenplay is flawed, "Hustle" is still worth watching at least once, for the underlying character study of a cop in midlife crisis, for the fine acting, and for the film's excellent cinematography and production values.

I watched "Hustle" only because there is Catherine Deneuve -in fact this is one of the very few movies she made in Hollywood. The pair she forms with Burt Reynolds also interested me.A LA detective has to discover why a young girl was found dead on a beach. He deals with the father, who obviously doesn't accept her loss and doesn't believe the police explanation -she has committed suicide. At the same time the detective has a relationship with a French prostitute, he dreams of taking her away from the job.It's a flat unexciting thriller, with quite empty dialogs and useless characters (can anyone explain me what does Ernest Borgnine do in the story?). Also the elements of the script are quite disconnected to each other -the murder of the girl and the relationship between Reynolds and Deneuve. Nothing is in-depth.Catherine Deneuve, at the end, is only a decorative presence.A big disappointment from Robert Aldrich -the director of "The Dirty Dozen".

the stunt danny d describes was not in the movie hustle, with burt reynolds! the stunt he describes was in another burt reynolds movie titled SHARKY'S MACHINE. in addition the stuntman wasn't david estridge, it was dar robinson.