Mad Dog and Glory (1993)

"It's the first time I pulled out my gun in 15 years. I pissed on myself."
Wayne Dobie (Robert De Niro) is a shy spoken and lonely police detective who's been nicknamed Mad Dog by his colleagues, which in turn is a joke on him, as he haven't used his "gun" in a very long time.
But when Wayne suddenly becomes the unlikely hero of the day, as he comes to the rescue of a local mobster named Frank "The Money Store" Milo (Bill Murray) he is soon visited by the beautiful Glory (Uma Thurman) who appears as a bizarre "thank you" gift, and is supposed to stay with Wayne for a whole week.
As time goes by the two of them seems to get well acquainted with each other but when Frank wants Glory back, Wayne must find a way to live up to his nickname or else, "No Guts, No Glory".

Produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by John McNaughton (Henry: Portait of a Serial Killer) this little well written, romantic, crime-comedy has always been one of my favorite Robert De Niro films, as it really stands out, in a good way, amongst his more usual mafioso 90s roles.
Here he comes of as a bit of a loner, that reminds me more of Dustin Hoffman, than your ordinary alpha male, vulgar and violent Bobby D macho man, and I guess it did not sit well at the time with his fans or the audience.
Seeing him getting dominated by funny man Bill Murray, must have been a hard watch for his die hard fans, but I think it deserved a far better fate than being treated as one of De Niro's "lesser" films made during the 1990s.
So the film flopped big time, but that does not mean it was a bad movie.

It comes with a stellar cast, that includes David Caruso (remember then, when he actually was acting before he become larger than life and throw his career down the drain), Mike Starr, Kathy Baker, Tom Towles and of course a young and stunning Uma Thurman as Glory.
Mad Dog and Glory might not be your typical "laugh out every other second" kind of comedy, but it is one of those rare films that do come with a certain rewarding gift for those that pay it enough attention, and of course really like this kind of humor, which at times is rather dark.
The film contains one of the best and funniest love scenes that I have ever seen, and instead of going all erotic-thriller, Hollywood early 90s style with a hot'n'steamy sex scene along with overblown sax solos lurking in the background, as the two lovers screams out, after having both reached orgasm at the exact same time.
This one however, is rather sweet and tender/quirky, and I have no trouble believing that Wayne found it a bit too hard, trying to catch up with a 23 year old, Uma Thurman lying naked on his coach. "Watch out for the next time."

Bill Murray might not be that great or believable as the bad guy. Yeah he is probably too much "Bill Murray" in this one, and I do think that the plans before shooting was that the role of Frank Milo was supposed to be handed out to De Niro, who I guess by then wanted to do other roles than just the ordianry gangster parts, and I kind liked how it ended up.
In several scenes, Murray really does towers above De Niro, making him seem like a little frighten kid and in one scene he grabs Wayne by the throat and says something like: "You love her?, I OWN HER!" which showed that he was not a guy to mess around with, or as Glory puts it: "Going to Frank is like taking heroin to cure an alcohol problem, ya know?"

Uma plays the "hooker" with a heart of gold, nothing new there, but she was obviously a very broken down character, just trying to get by, and even though the ending seemed a bit to feel-good "Hollywood" like, I found it to work well.
Turned out that some of the test audience did not approve or like the idea of having Raging Bull being beaten to a bloody pulp by Dr. Peter Venkman, so there was probably some last minute changes before releasing the final product, and I would love to see a director's cut or one that comes with the original scenes, which also were rumored to show that Glory come off as a far more manipulative figure, and De Niro being even more of a pathetic loser.

Here are two of my favorite scenes from the film, one were David Caruso proves that he was once a real bad ass (not the parody that is Horatio Caine) and you don't have to beat someone half to death, to get your message across.
This is how one should handle women beating lowlifes, without even breaking a sweat:
"Different strokes, for different folks!"

Love Wayne's reaction later on (not in this clip) seeing how his best friend so easily handled that big violent bully, without even touching the guy, while himself earlier on was brushed aside like dog shit when trying to interfere when hearing his nexdoor lady got beaten up.
Wayne then has a little "breakdown" in the park later on, going all Travis Bickle when approached by a mugger in the park: "You wanna go dodge city Motherfucker!"

The other one is well, just hilarious. Made me a big fan of Louis Prima "the best" by the way. If I had had sex with Uma Thurman, I would probably be doing something similar as Wayne.