The Man
"Do you know how powerful the human bite is?" asks the nerdy dental supplies salesman to the hard-boiled cop. Do you know some movies can bite even harder? "The Man" is 83 minutes of flatulence-perfumed proof.
Oh, now, that's a little unfair, isn't it? The wonderful mono-browed comedian Eugene Levy has built up a reservoir of pop-culture good will that stretches from "SCTV" back in the '80s to "A Mighty Wind" in 2003, with his portrayal of "Jim's Dad" in the "American Pie" movies a deserved mainstream windfall. And Samuel L. Jackson has made some curious career choices, certainly ("Formula 51," we speak your name), but he is as reliable a smart, snarling tough guy as there is currently working.
They are, in short, professionals, and here they wring every last ounce of mustard out of a rancid boardwalk hotdog. Nice try, but "The Man" still tastes dreadful.
Jackson is Derrick Vann, a Detroit-based federal agent in the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and criminals have just stolen a major stockpile of guns, killing Vann's crooked partner in the process. The agent arranges a sting and sets up a meeting with the chief villain, a natty British hoodlum named Joey (Luke Goss), at a downtown diner. Major snafu: Andy Fidler (Levy), in town from Wisconsin to speak at a dental supplies convention, enters the diner and is mistaken by the bad guys for the shadowy arms buyer.
That's pretty much the plot. The rest is Andy and Vann screeching around Motor City in Vann's Caddy while the white guy natters and the black dude stews. A few more bodies turn up, and every so often Vann pauses to beat local snitch Booty (Anthony Mackie) over the head with a phone book. Off on the sidelines are Vann's boss, Lieutenant Carbone (comedian Susie Essman, doing nothing particularly funny), and an internal affairs cop (Miguel Ferrer) who wants the agent's head on a plate. Whenever the pace flags, director Les Mayfield and his screenwriters break out the fart jokes, and let me tell you, that's a lot of fart jokes. The family behind me at the preview screening roared in delight whenever Andy's bowels rumbled, so obviously there's an audience for this sort of thing. You know who you are.
"The Man" is a junkyard dog of a movie, but when it lets Levy and Jackson trade barbs, some laughs do squeak out. Early on, Andy lectures Vann with suburban priggishness about his swearing and suggests he replace one particular epithet with the phrase "Fuhh . . . crying out loud." This comes in handy when the agent visits his estranged wife and daughter, a scene so unexpectedly tender it's like finding a love letter in a bordello. Later, when Andy gets cocky in his role as Vann's partner, Levy plays him as strutting King Geek, and the bit in which he insists Vann is his "bitch" is the funniest thing in the movie. And now I've spoiled it for you. Sorry.
For the most part, "The Man" squanders its wee potential by asking the stars to play as broadly as possible. This is a disservice to them both but especially to Levy, who repeatedly bugs his eyes cartoonishly as the camera bears down on him. He's a concatenation of wonk cliches and the most Caucasian thing in the movie, to the point where Levy's makeup appears to have been laid on extra-pallid. "The Man" can thus lay claim to being some sort of cultural benchmark: It's the first whiteface comedy.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
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