To Die Standing

Watching To Die Standing is a little like watching Starsky and Hutch, although you are never quite sure who is the blond and who is the brunette.  This is meant to be a buddy movie, although I never got the feeling that the principals ever really became buddies.  What they do develop is a grudging respect for each other.  The movie title never made sense to me, but perhaps it doesn’t matter.

Juan Delgado (Robert Beltran) is a Peruvian police detective who has organized the collar of his career, that of Castillo, a notorious, and dangerous, drug lord.  He does it with the help of Castillo’s American accountant who has been guaranteed no extradition to America, where the penalties for money laundering are much stiffer than Peru’s.  Into Delgado’s life comes Broderick (Cliff de Young), a DEA agent that Delgado quickly labels “a cowboy.”  Yoda would have called him “reckless.”  Broderick is fighting a personal demon, the death of his daughter due to a drug overdose.  So he is prepared to do whatever it takes to get Castillo back to America.  His introduction to Delgado occurs in jail, where Broderick is cooling his heels after pulling a gun on a thief at the airport.  It is not an auspicious start.

Things get worse when Broderick tries to bully Delgado into returning his gun, and winds up flat on his back for his efforts.  They continue further downhill when his hotel room is blown up, and finally hit rock bottom when Castillo escapes, with help from corrupt Peruvian police.  Delgado finds himself stuck with the case and the cowboy, who he puts up on the living room couch after the hotel incident.  To be told his own squad has corrupt members is something he will not believe, but the embarrassing truth is revealed and Delgado must accept that the cowboy knows what he is talking about.

The movie wants us to believe that the two become friends, but there is no friendship.  Cliff de Young’s Broderick is laconic, ironic, and suspicious to a fault.  His instincts fail him in the presence of the Ambassador’s assistant, and he engages in a sudden romantic interlude, which never comes off as believable to this viewer.  The betrayal that comes later is rather unexpected, until you see it develop.  Broderick makes me wonder if Dirty Harry would have been this way on Prozac.  Similarly, Delgado is proud, efficient, and suspicious of the American.  When he realizes that he needs Broderick, he is willing to work with the man, but never fully warms up to him.  A distance remains, even when Delgado’s wife is attacked and nearly killed.  Delgado wants revenge, but settles for an arrest with Broderick’s urging.  The two come to respect each other by the end of the movie, and that is all.

The best scenes in the movie come when Delgado takes Broderick for a spin through Lima.  Delgado is cool in the chaos of the traffic, while Broderick desperately searches for protection from the accident he is sure will occur.  Later, Broderick returns the favor chasing Castillo’s henchmen with the car in reverse, while Delgado literally rides shotgun, trading fire with the crooks.  I could just visualize Starsky and Hutch in hot pursuit in a snappy red Torino instead of the dirty brown Ford so beloved by Hutch.

The movie tries hard to make this a likeable pairing, and there are moments when it seems to work.  Broderick’s humor does result in snappy retorts from Delgado and opportunities to bring the two closer together.  The opportunities are not built on so the relationship does not go as far as it might.  The really frustrating part about all this is that I wanted the relationship to be more than it was.  Perhaps it was never meant to be or perhaps there were other variables that inserted themselves.  In any case, it is an OK movie with two fairly likeable characters that eventually decide they like each other.

A Comment About Robert Beltran’s Performance:

The pairing in this movie made me wonder if this was the relationship Chakotay and Paris should have had.  And had Robert exuded more of the ‘edge’ that he brought to Chakotay, perhaps the pairing with de Young would have been stronger.  I really wanted to see this work, and kept waiting for a payoff I never saw.  Whenever Broderick would needle Delgado I watched for the response.  Sometimes it was great, such as Delgado tossing Broderick to the floor in a basic defensive judo move.  In one scene, the Good/Bad Cop moment, Broderick and Delgado seem to click together.  Alas, it doesn’t last long enough.  Broderick is a walking, talking Ugly American in a country he has no particular desire to be in.  It is a classic setup for conflict leading to respect, and perhaps genuine friendship, yet it is soft-pedaled far too often.  Was this due to the direction?  And what was up with Robert’s accent?  Now you hear it and now you don’t.  On another front, I noticed something this time that escaped me before.  When Robert is kissing a woman, he often frames her face in his hands.  I will have to look again at the other movies to see if this technique shows up in similar scenes.  Over all, Robert tries hard to be a cop who has seen it all and is not easily impressed by visiting Americans.  He is more effective when he is tough and assertive, than when he relies on aloofness.  He is inconsistent, but that may not be entirely his doing, and we are continually reminded that he is capable of more.