Hickey & Boggs is directed by Robert Culp and written by Walter Hill. It stars Culp, Bill Cosby, James Woods, Ta-Ronce, Carmencristina Moreno, Rosalind Cash, Lou Frizzel, Isabel Sanford and Sheila Sullivan. Music is by Ted Ashford and cinematography by Bill Butler.

Al Hickey (Cosby) & Frank Boggs (Culp) are two jaded private investigators who get hired to find a missing woman and quickly find themselves submerged in a world of murder and untruths.

I don't think the title does it any favours, because in no way does it imply what a bleak and potent neo-noir this is. In many ways Hickey & Boggs is the anti private investigator film, it portrays two men failing in life who are just about clinging to the last vestiges of their work, that of the private dick. Robert Culp and Walter Hill strip everything back to unglamourous terms, there is nothing remotely sexy or invigorating about this detective agency, Al and Frank do it because it's all they have, all they know in fact.

The film makers push the two men through a grimy and fetid Los Angeles, pitching them in amongst an array of weirdos, killers, revolutionaries, sexual deviants and angry officials. There's actually a lot of bold colours on show, the two PI's themselves wearing bright lurid blue and green suits, but all the colour coding on show in the film is a front, a misdirection tactic, this Los Angeles is on the surface colourful and sunny into the bargain, but Hickey & Boggs firmly operates on a seedy and downbeat level, the urban milieu as far removed from a holiday brochure as you can get.

Al and Frank, bless their shabby souls, are damaged goods, incapable of the kind of human interaction that most take for granted. Even between themselves they have lost the will to interact outside of work orientated chatter. In fact chatter is a key issue in the film, or lack of as it turns out. There's some beautifully zippy dialogue throughout, real spiky barbs straight out of noirville, but the pic is at its best, away from the action scenes, in how periods of silence involving Al & Frank say so much. One will either rant or repeatedly ask a question, while the other stares off into space or nurse yet another alcoholic beverage to forget his pain. As a character study, this wades through the sludge and blood to show a clinically cynical hand.

Then there is the action scenes, excellently constructed by Culp. Two shoot-outs especially are high grade in quality, and extended they are as well. Aurally they are like a Panzer Division unloading its armoury, visually it's intentionally comic book as per bullets used, but excitement is guaranteed, while the finale, is played out on a beach that gives great carnage and then cuts like a knife to close the pic down in the most suitable of fashions. The screenplay is at times a little too aware of trying to be a convoluted nudge nudge wink wink to the halcyon days of film noir, with Walter Hill on his first writing assignment proving to be wet behind the ears, though the eagerness and respect of the style of film making is genuine in the extreme.

Three absolutes come out of viewing Hickey & Boggs nowadays. One, is that Culp the director, some minor pacing issues aside, really shouldn't have let the film's poor box office prevent him from directing further assignments. Two, is that Cosby shows here he was capable of great character based drama, his performance is simply terrific. Three? Hickey & Boggs is under seen, under valued and should be a requisite viewing for anyone interested in neo-noir. 9/10

Robert Culp and Bill Cosby are two PIs in LA. They are hired to track a missing woman, which leads them into a miasma of organized crimes and random violence.

It's Walter Hill's first credited screenplay. As is his wont, character is indicated by action, rather than talk, with busted relationships that leaves them the only people who care about each other. Director Robert Culp directs decently, with scenes of violence alternating with boredom, with shots indicating their relationship.

Unfortunately, these alternating sequences leave long, quiet sequences which result in let-downs in pacing. It's an erratic movie. Vincent Gardenia plays the shouty cop who they interact with. James Woods appears in a small role.

Walter Hill wrote the deliciously knotty and fatalistic script for this marvelously gritty private eye mystery action thriller with the unlikely (and possibly incredible) duo of Jason Robards and Strother Martin in mind for the leads. Instead, the familiar "I Spy" team of Robert Culp and Bill Cosby wound up playing the titular rumpled, cynical, tight-lipped and terminally luckless desperate and destitute detectives for hire, a couple of rundown and weary inconsequential losers whose seemingly simple and straightforward case involving a missing rich girl ties in with a suitcase full of mucho stolen mob money and a bunch of dangerous, not to be trifled with gangsters who are willing to use any brutish means necessary to get their hot loot back.

The wonderfully easy'n'breezy chemistry between Culp and Cosby effortlessly carries the picture from start to finish. Culp's laudably crisp and assured direction scores a completely on-target bull's eye with the resolutely hard-boiled, tough-minded and no-nonsense harsh tone in particular; this is the kind of top-notch rough'n'tumble modern-day film noir affair where several innocent bystanders are unfairly killed and everyone connected with the stolen bucks ends up getting their violent just desserts by the movie's thrilling conclusion. Peppered with a splendidly sharp line in sardonic humor, punctuated by three stirring shoot-outs (the first in an empty baseball stadium, another in a parking lot, and the last one on a beach), immensely enlivened by a sensational supporting cast filled out by such always welcome folks as Rosalind Cash, Michael Moriarty, Vincent Gardenia, Ed Lauter, and James Woods, and topped off with one of those quintessentially 70's amazing downbeat defeatist climaxes, this simply super sleeper overall rates as one of the finest, most shamefully neglected and undeservedly undervalued crime features from the 70's.