“It wasn’t a risk”: the Scottish director who tried and failed to salvage Burt Reynolds’ career
The biggest danger to Burt Reynolds‘ career was always Burt Reynolds, with the actor developing an unfortunate habit of shooting himself in the foot.
There are only so many times an established star can turn down a game-changing role before they’re no longer an established star, and by the time Reynolds reached the end of the 1980s, his unbroken five-year stint as the biggest box office draw in American cinema seemed like a distant memory.
To be honest, he didn’t really have anyone to blame but himself. He should have continued striking when the iron was at its hottest, but instead, he kept knocking back parts in acclaimed, awards-worthy, or crowd-pleasing smash hits in favour of making rubbish action flicks, thrillers, and comedies, which gradually saw him slide down the Hollywood ladder and into irrelevance.
After all, you can’t turn down Die Hard, Pretty Woman, Jack Nicholson’s Academy Award-winning gig in Terms of Endearment, James fucking Bond, and Star Wars‘ Han Solo, go on to make Stroker Ace, Stick, Malone, Rent-a-Cop, and Striptease, and expect that everything will turn out alright in the long run.
Even Paul Thomas Anderson failed to drag Reynolds back to mainstream prominence, with his career-best and Oscar-nominated outing in Boogie Nights leading to absolutely nothing, with the veteran quickly falling back into the habit of knocking out B-grade genre fare, and he even turned down a reunion in Magnolia because he hated the director so much.
However, there was a brief silver lining, which was more of a false dawn than anything else. In 1989, Reynolds deliberately shed his marquee leading man baggage for the first time to play a character part, accepting top billing in Scottish director Bill Forsyth’s Breaking In, albeit only after Nicholson and Paul Newman had passed.
Acting his age for once, the 1989 crime caper saw him playing an aging burglar with eyes on retirement, but only after he pulls off the fabled ‘one last job’. When he does, he accidentally discovers a protégé instead, with the unlikely duo forging a bond that finds the old-timer teaching the newcomer the tricks of the trade.
“No, it wasn’t a risk,” Gregory’s Girl director Forsyth told Film Talk of hiring Reynolds. “He had played the same roles successfully in those big movies for more than 15 years. There’s a certain point in your life as an actor when you are becoming older. Time is telling on you, so you can’t play the same action comedy roles, and also, you’re maturing. For him, it was time out after playing the endless Burt Reynolds type of roles.”
Admittedly, Breaking In was a flop, but it was nonetheless the star’s best-reviewed film since Semi-Tough, which was released 12 years previously. It was also his best performance in just as long, if not longer, and should have opened the door to a new era as a character man. What were his next headline roles? The woeful comedy Modern Love and the awful Cop and a Half, so not a single lesson was learned.
