Made Men has the great Jim Belushi as a former mob guy who stole $12 million and then testified against his boss, so before anyone could find out where the money was, he was put into witness protection. The film starts with some of the mobster's hit men coming to take Belushi away, but when they bump into local sheriff Timothy Dalton, things start to go haywire, and only get worse when Belushi escapes, and the hit men chase him to meth cooker Steve Railsback's, shack in the woods. Now it's a series of shootouts and double-crosses, with character's like Michael Beach's not exactly being who they seem, and all the while Belushi's character vacillates between guy you want to love, and guy you can't stand. In the end, who will end up with the money?
This is a fun late 90s romp, essentially made fun by Belushi's performance, plus Dalton's as the sheriff. Belushi seems to make his character unlikeable by design, and just as we think we may like him, he does something bad. Dalton is just chewing scenery and loving every minute of it as the small town sheriff, but he's also a little sadistic too, which makes it more intriguing. Juxtaposed with all these characters, we have Michael Beach as something of a straight man, because, if we didn't have him, we'd have no one to relate to, and he helps to anchor us among all the craziness. All in all this is just a fun 90s organized crime romp.
Back in October of 2021 I did Royce on Will's Exploding Helicopter podcast--if you're not subscribed to that too, you should be--and on it, I discovered, I kind of like Jim Belushi. Why is that so shocking? I wondered myself, and when we watched this, I enjoyed him here too. In my head I decided it was just that he played a standard, doughy, white, Boomer dad on national TV, something safe and fun for middle America in flyover country, and I associated him with that image. But then for this review, I went back to my K9: PI review, from all the way back in August of 2007, and read this that I wrote then:
"I've never understood the whole Belushi thing. I don't see how he not only gets work, but network sitcoms, and not only network sitcoms, but ones that people watch enough so that they stay on the air beyond the pilot. I asked my friends, to see if maybe it was just me, but it seemed unanimous that people think he's a tool. I'm sure as a dude in real life he's probably not so bad, but as an actor and funny man, it just ain't there. In fact, it's beyond not there, it actually hurts a little."
Did I say that? K9:PI was a rough one, and at that time, when the blog was just starting, I tended to go heavier in my opinions, and Belushi took the brunt of the pain I endured for that one. We all grow as people though, and 28-year-old me is different from 44-year-old me, and my tastes have changed. Like when I was a kid and I hated pickles and mustard, and now I need both on my burger. Jim Belushi is my pickles and mustard now I guess.
Timothy Dalton was the reason I was watching this though, not Belushi, and he didn't disappoint either. I knew he could do comedy, like when he did The Beautician and the Beast, but in that he was more of a straight man, and this was more of a scenery-chewing fun character. I haven't seen License to Kill in probably 30 years, and I've never seen The Living Daylights--though it has a great theme song by A-ha--so I think they could both use a rewatch. Interestingly enough, only The Living Daylights is part of a streaming package I subscribe to, HBOMax, while somehow License to Kill isn't part of any of the major ones--according to Letterboxd it's on Paramount+ on Apple+, which apparently is different from the Paramount+ I subscribe to, because it's not on that. How are they not all in one place so you could do a marathon of them? Especially for someone like me who's barely seen any of them? Come one streamers, get your act together.
Surprisingly, of all the names in this, Michael Beach was the one who was already tagged, having been in two movies on the site, the last almost ten years ago to the day of this posting on June 19th of 2013 when we looked at Assassins Tale as one of the screeners we received from Kevin at MTI video at that time. When we first see him as part of the mobster's goon squad coming to take Belushi, we know from experience that Beach generally isn't in a movie with a role like that, and sure enough we find out there's more to him as the film goes on. As I mentioned above, what he does best here is plays the straight man, or anchor to keep us grounded while we're dealing with all these cooky characters. Near the end, when he has Belushi at gun point and he wants the money, he loses his patience, the same way we as an audience have lost our patience with Belushi's character and his constant lying and messing around. It was one of those performances that I didn't realize I needed until after I'd watched it and was discussing the film further, but it was very necessary, and Beach did great with it.
Finally, when you go to the IMDb page for this film, under film connections it mentions three sequels that, when I looked them up, seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with this film. I looked up the director of those three films, Steve Rahaman, thinking maybe he did a film called Made Men too that this was confused with, but he didn't. It's one of the more fascinating things about IMDb, that you can edit the site on your own, so is this a case where a filmmaker is attaching his films to another film in the hopes that people will come across his films? Or did some random person just add those films to the connections page thinking they belonged together. It worked for me, because I was curious enough and looked up the films and Rahaman's other work. IMDb is a bit like the Wild West, but we movie bloggers and reviewers rely on it for so much. Look at Don "The Dragon" Wilson, who had films listed on his IMDb bio that were subsequently removed. That brought his tag count down, and has delayed his entry into the 40 Club; and it lowered his exploding helicopter film count on Will's site. I guess to some extent, we need to take what we see on IMDb with a grain of salt.
And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can get this on VHS, DVD outside the US, and, the way I did it, on YouTube. As you can see from my images, the YouTube version is only so good, but it'll get you to the church on time. And if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode I did with Will that covered this, 113 in the archives, "Two Non Bonds," where we discuss this and the Pierce Brosnan film Live Wire.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175877
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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