I’m
fascinated by recurring actor-director collaborations. Not just those
much-heralded, long-term working relationships—your Lemmon and Wilder, your
Mifune and Kurosawa, your DeNiro/DiCaprio and Scorsese—and not contractually-mandated IP/franchise-based partnerships, but those instances where actors and
directors will click and work together for one or two more films. By way
of example, besides his noted working relationships with Spielberg and Lucas,
Harrison Ford clocked two films apiece with multiple directors over the 80s and
90s: Australia’s own Peter Weir (Witness, The Mosquito
Coast) and Phillip Noyce (Patriot
Games, Clear and Present Danger, admittedly franchise entries), but also Mike Nichols (Working Girl, Regarding
Henry), Alan Pakula (Presumed Innocent, The
Devil’s Own), and Sydney Pollock (Sabrina,
Random Hearts). It reveals a lot, to me at least, about Ford’s
stardom, who he esteemed and was comfortable working with, the material he
gravitated towards and the body of work he was looking to build etc, before
he became more of a free agent in the 2000s and started chasing geek material in the
2010s.
In
his sparse filmography following the success of Crocodile Dundee, Paul Hogan has
worked largely with three directors: John Cornell (Crocodile Dundee II,
Almost an Angel), Simon Wincer (Flipper,
Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles), and most
recently Dean Murphy (Strange
Bedfellows, Charlie & Boots, The Very Excellent Mr Dundee). Of course, as noted in my review of Crocodile Dundee II, Cornell’s history with Hogan long preceded that particular feature, including substantial involvement in the original, hence there was precedent for that collaboration and for Cornell making his directorial debut on that generously budgeted, large-scale,
and multi-continent production.
As it happens, their follow-up Almost an Angel (1990) would also be Cornell’s directorial swansong. It’s a smaller scale film, despite a reportedly higher budget and some top tier talent: as well as reuniting with Crocodile Dundee cinematographer (and Peter Weir regular) Russell Boyd, Weir’s regular composer Maurice Jarr, scorer of no less than Dr Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia, is on music duty. In addition, it's a riskier undertaking, stepping outside the Crocodile Dundee brand and entirely outside Hogan’s Australian milieu (though his accent is retained and winkingly acknowledged in a throwaway line).
Almost an Angel centres on Terry (Hogan), a safecracker recently released from prison who pivots to bankrobbing. He instinctively saves a child from being hit by a car and has a near-death experience. In hospital, Terry dreams of meeting God (Charlton Heston in a short cameo) and being given a second chance—based on his good deed—to do good in the world as an angel of mercy: the “first scumbag” to be granted this privilege. This mission brings him into the lives of wheelchair-bound Steve (Elias Koteas), his sister Rose (Hogan's Crocodile Dundee co-star and wife Linda Kozlowski), and their rec centre for needy youth.
Hogan never particularly leans in on the "scumbag" qualities of Terry; he's too laidback, occasionally to a fault. Also, something
I detected when rewatching Crocodile Dundee II—and which I suspect tracks across the rest of Hogan’s filmography—is that he’s not inherently compelling on screen by himself or alongside minor
players, but when paired well with a co-star and building rapport over multiple
scenes he’s engaging to watch. For contrast, look at Rodney Dangerfield and
Danny De Vito—two comedic actors with films tailing Crocodile
Dundee at the 1986 box office—or
Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams, whose newest releases Crocodile
Dundee II trailed at the 1988 box office: all inherently watchable whether alone on screen or sharing screen
time. Not a fatal flaw, just a remark re: where Hogan's onscreen energy comes from.
That’s the case here; after being somewhat uninteresting onscreen over the
first half hour of the film—despite being disguised (during bank
robberies) as Willie Nelson and Rod Stewart AND being read the riot act by
Heston’s God (adorned with his Ten Commandments beard)—Hogan sparks later when sharing scenes with Kozlowski and
Koteas. The latter was building his character actor chops, with varying lengths
of hair, across this and four other 1990 releases, including Look
Who’s Talking Too and his beloved (to
those of my vintage) turn as Casey Jones in Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles. He and Hogan have great onscreen
bro-mantic rapport, and had I known a third of Almost an Angel was a Paul Hogan-Elias Koteas buddy film I probably would have watched
it years ago.
There’s
good reason I didn’t know: Wikipedia, not treading on eggshells, states that
“The film was a critical and commercial failure”, and its afterlife has been a
dormant one. Despite, or perhaps due to, the thorough lack of fanfare
surrounding the film, I found things to enjoy in its modest pleasures, character moments, and
earnest, Frank Capra-esque aspirations, the latter quite anomalous in the high concept/low moral film culture of 1990. Moreover, Cornell and Hogan, in testing new
waters, incrementally stretch Hogan’s film persona outside of Mick Dundee, and in doing so
unlock a more grounded Everyman version of Hogan that would be the basis of his
homegrown work in Strange Bedfellows and Charlie
& Boots in the 2000s.
Ben