Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

See No Evil, Hear No Evil Blu-ray Movie Review

If You Can't Make a Sequel, At Least Do a Rematch

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 22, 2012

After the success of Stir Crazy, Columbia/TriStar urgently wanted to reteam Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in another comedy, but a host of personal factors got in the way. Even a partial list reads like a soap opera. There was Pryor's 1980 self-immolation while freebasing cocaine; his subsequent recovery from drug addiction, only to be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis; Wilder's marriage to Gilda Radner, with whom he made three films; and their repeated unsuccessful attempts to start a family, followed by Radner's diagnosis with ovarian cancer.

It was during an apparent remission from Radner's cancer that Wilder and Pryor reunited with their Silver Streak director, Arthur Hiller, to shoot See No Evil, Hear No Evil. Wilder had insisted on script participation, and he shared the credit with five other writers. But viewers expecting another Stir Crazy were disappointed. The two stars still had undeniable onscreen chemistry, but they'd become different people in the intervening nine years. The film itself lacked the loose, improvisational style that Stir Crazy's "fish out of water" format and road trip story allowed. Instead, it relied on intricately choreographed physical comedy and, in one instance, a film-length conceptual gag with a delayed pay-off (I'm being vague on purpose for those who haven't yet seen it). Contemporary critics were harsh, but See No Evil, Hear No Evil has aged well precisely because physical gags are timeless (which is why Chaplin and Keaton still make us laugh). To the credit of the writers and the performers, the routines are funny even though many of them depend on Pryor's character being blind and Wilder's being deaf. Pryor and Wilder are so good that they never seem to be making fun of the disabilities. Instead, they use the disabilities to make fun of everyone else (including each other).

Wally Karue (Pryor) lost his sight in a car accident. To the endless frustration of his sister, Adele (Kirsten Childs), Wally routinely pretends that he can still see, which lands him in all sorts of trouble. He also has a bad habit of placing bets on horses (both legal and otherwise), which he rarely wins, and of quitting jobs when he doesn't feel respected.

Dave Lyons (Wilder) lost his hearing to teenage scarlet fever. A skilled lip reader, Dave can conceal his condition as long as he can see people's faces while they're talking. Formerly an actor while he still had partial hearing, Dave now runs a newsstand in an office building in Union Square. Needing an assistant, Dave places a want ad, and Adele brings Wally in response. The job interview, like many scenes to come, is a precisely timed dance of comic miscues, but Wally eventually gets the job.

The pair seem to get on, and they even discover a talent for coordinated bar room brawling, with Wally putting all his rage into his fists and Dave directing his jabs and his footwork. But then one day Wally's bookie, Scotto (John Capodice), comes looking for him on an overdue marker and gets himself murdered right in front of the newsstand. The killers are a sleek pair of psychopaths, Kirgo and Eve (Kevin Spacey and Joan Severance), for whom Scotto was transporting some sort of rare gold coin (McGuffin alert!). They, in turn, report to a shadowy figure named Sutherland (Anthony Zerbe), who, for the longest time, is seen only in silhouette at the other end of telephone calls.

Wally heard the gunshot that killed Scotto, and Dave, who happened to have his back turned examining his shop's antacids, saw only Eve's spectacular legs as she walked away. By the time the police arrive, they're both crouched over Scotto's body, and Dave has thoughtlessly picked up the gun that Eve left behind. They're both arrested, but not before Wally has managed to pocket the contents of the newsstand's change box, where, as it happens, Scotto dropped the rare gold coin just before Kirgo and Eve caught up with him. As we know from what we've already seen, neither Wally nor Dave has great communications skills, and New York cops aren't renowned for delicacy; so both of them are hustled off in cuffs.

For the rest of the film, Wally and Dave are chased around New York and New Jersey alternately by the police—from whom they manage to escape after an exasperating interrogation by a police captain named Braddock (the late Alan North, who also played cops in Highlander and Police Squad!)—and by Kirgo and Eve, who want first the coin and then to kill them, because they're classic "loose ends". Wally and Dave take the news of their impending elimination each according to their character: Dave tries to bargain his way out, promising they won't say anything, while Wally asks Eve for a last wish, adding, "I suppose a fuck is out of the question?"

Evading pursuit makes the mismatched pair bicker like an old married couple, but it also forces them to work together in numerous intricate maneuvers. Their flight in a police car driven by Wally results in one of the more unusual chase scenes in Eighties films (and can anyone explain how the cops manage not to notice Eve's hot red sports car joining the pursuit?). Their masquerade as a pair of European doctors (German and Swedish) attending a medical convention so that they can infiltrate a luxury hotel where Kirgo and Eve are staying gives Pryor some of his best moments of pure silliness. (He gets pulled into a seminar where he has to answer questions about orgasm therapy—in a Swedish accent.) And the long-postponed encounter with the mysterious Sutherland is, for me, one of director Hiller's finest set pieces. But let's not spoil it for the first-time viewer.

Keep an eye out for Second City member Audrie Neenan, who shows up in two roles, one as a maid at the New Jersey hotel, and the other as a hapless police photographer who finds herself trapped in a clever variation of "Who's on first?" as she tries to take Dave's mug shot.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Image completes its recent trilogy of Richard Pryor releases (the other two being The Toy and Stir Crazy) with a respectable 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray that brings out all the detail in cinematographer Victor Kemper's imagery. Kemper, whose credits include Dog Day Afternoon and Eyes of Laura Mars, knows a thing or two about shooting a bustling cityscape, and he uses locations like Union Square, Tribeca, the Westside Highway and the Hudson River to great advantage. People often debate whether comedies are worth upgrading to Blu-ray; regardless of where one stands on the issue, when a film includes scenery like this, the question isn't even close.

Detail in everything from Dave's newsstand products to Eve's lacey undergarments is well-rendered. Black levels and contrast are appropriate, and colors are well-delineated and properly saturated. Film grain is visible but not intrusive, and the grain pattern appears natural and undisturbed by digital manipulation. I saw no indication of high frequency filtering or artificial sharpening, nor were any compression artifacts visible.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's original stereo soundtrack is presented as PCM 2.0. The left and right separations are distinct from the opening bars of the lively score by Stewart Copeland, but there is no surround activity to speak of, even when the track is played through a decoding system such as DPL IIx. Voices sound natural, and the dialogue is always clear.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

I don't have Sony's 2001 DVD release of See No Evil, Hear No Evil for comparison, but informed sources report that the disc included the film's theatrical trailer, along with trailers for Money Train, Bad Boys and Blue Streak. The Blu-ray, however, contains no extras.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The film in which Pryor and Wilder first teamed, Silver Streak, is probably the one that fans most want to see on Blu-ray, but it's a Fox property, and who knows when it'll see the light of day? Meanwhile, Sony controls the rights to two of Pryor's peerless standup films, Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip and Richard Pryor . . . Here and Now, which would make a terrific double-feature Blu-ray. Pryor was a brilliant and subtle actor, but no film role ever fully tapped his restless genius, even the autobiographical Jo-Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, which he co-wrote and directed. He needed a live audience and a stage that he could people with characters, all of them rendered so vividly that even inanimate objects acquired distinct personalities. (Pryor's crack pipe in Live on the Sunset Strip spoke with a more distinctive voice than the leads in many contemporary films.) For now, though, See No Evil, Hear No Evil will have to hold us. Recommended.