Pacific Heights is one of those loopy thrillers where if only one character had common sense, a whole lot of aggravation, frustration and tragedy would be easily avoided.
The movie stars Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine as a young couple about to buy their first home, an old Victorian in San Francisco. It’s a little run down and quite pricey, but they’re willing to do the repairs and renovation themselves. It also helps that the place accommodates two apartments that can be rented to help ease the exorbitant monthly mortgage payments.
A nice elderly Asian couple (Mako and Nobu McCarthy) move into one while there’s a competition of sorts for the other. One contender (Carl Lumbly), a Black separatee who can’t cook, grumbles at first about being asked to fill out a credit report but ultimately apologizes and complies. The other (Michael Keaton) makes all kinds of excuses in order to avoid filling out his. In fact, once he finds his opening, he moves right in. He wisely changes the locks so they’re stuck with him.
In one of many contrivances the movie can’t overcome, the Black man does in fact return his paperwork but he just slides it in under the front door where it’s inevitably ignored and repeatedly trampled on by movers and members of the Asian couple’s family until it gets stuck on someone’s shoe and then thrown into one of their incoming boxes. There’s no follow-up scene where they find it as they unpack. The whole thing is simply forgotten.
Hold on. You’re telling me this man, who we later learn is a high-ranking police officer, couldn’t just pick up the phone to give a head’s up before delivering his completed report? He later encounters Griffith at his precinct where in not so many words, he expresses scepticism about her not receiving it. He also gives her bad advice on what to do about Keaton.
By this point, a lot of bad shit has gone down. There’s a whole lot of drilling and hammering going on in that second apartment. A stray white cat the couple takes in suddenly disappears but, for once, survives the entire movie. There’s a sudden bug infestation which even alarms a well-versed exterminator.
Someone else appears to be in Keaton’s new home while he’s mysteriously away. When the Asian couple accidentally cause a power outage while trying to hang up a piece of framed artwork, there’s Keaton sitting in his stolen Porsche in the garage staring daggers at a freaked out Griffith.
What is he up to? Well, as it turns out, he’s a thief. By the time Griffith finally manages to get back into his apartment, with the assistance of a locksmith, the place is a fucking mess. Flies are buzzing around, it smells, all the valuable accoutrements that were put in here are all gone, and so is Keaton who had been hoping his manipulative antics would result in acquiring this dump dirt cheap.
Instead, cutting his losses, he moves on to the next mark, some lonely old socialite (Griffith’s mom Tippi Hedren in a silent cameo) who stands to inherit millions from her dead husband.
Throughout all this, Modine continually rages about being screwed over, especially when Keaton gives him contacts that don’t back up his story. Despite flashing a bunch of hundreds and promising to put up six months of rent money in advance, Keaton never follows through. The nice Asian couple are reaching their breaking point with all the late night clanging and banging. And Griffith doesn’t really have the flu.
Yeah, that moment where Modine finds out what’s really going on with his girlfriend is odd. He does not sound all that enthusiastic. To be fair, neither does she. She hints at a possible abortion but stress ultimately solves their problem. That revelation happens right after a bizarre nightmare Modine has (featuring a silly appearance by the cat and Keaton’s noise-making compadre) in which he imagines his partner getting out of Keaton’s car all hot and bothered. For the record, she is thoroughly uninterested.
The couple consult a lawyer (the always dependable Laurie Metcalf) after an incident where Modine loses his cool and starts shutting down all of Keaton’s utilities, a big illegal no-no, apparently. The cops are called and take the tenant’s side which I find hard to believe especially in a capitalist country that is not exactly super protective of renters in general.
Later on, Keaton pre-calls 911 before pretending to be compassionate about Griffith’s recent misfortune which deliberately inflames Modine to the point where he beats his clever enemy to a bloody pulp. The siren sounds arrive just seconds later and Modine gets arrested but not much happens with the case other than the absurdity of a restraining order being placed on a landlord instead of the deadbeat who never does pay him a cent.
Worried about Griffith living all alone in their new home (Keaton is already tormenting her on the phone) especially after she won’t come clean about her concerns in an impromptu call she initiates, Modine, now living with a friend (Dorian Harewood) who never wanted them to buy this place in the first place, defies the law only to be confronted by a gun-toting Keaton in the dark. The heel makes it look like a justified shooting.
As Metcalf appears to be getting nowhere with an unsympathetic judge, the embattled couple start fighting each other. But they eventually catch a break when Keaton disappears and Griffith starts acting like Veronica Mars.
I first saw Pacific Heights when it came out in theatres back in the fall of 1990. I had just started writing movie reviews for my high school magazine and newsletter. I kinda liked it but most reviewers far more experienced and sophisticated than me knew better.
32 years later, I now see what they disliked. Michael Keaton isn’t the problem, per se, but he does deliver an uneven, flawed performance. He looks evil enough, though, especially in his sunglasses, and he correctly keeps a mostly even temperament throughout the whole proceedings, even though you see right through his act. Up until a certain point, he’s a queen playing chess with a couple of outmatched pawns.
That is, until he gets too greedy. We find out that he assumes the identities of people he fucks over which would make a lot more sense if they were dead. Ignoring the advice of that cop that should’ve known better, Griffith starts digging and making calls.
The lovely Bev D’Angelo from the Vacation movies makes the most of her bit part playing Keaton’s former paramour who remains very much in denial about her partner in crime ditching her for other scams. She even shows up in San Francisco only to be rebuffed by his fellow thief. She’s way too taken with phony postcards, by the way.
When Griffith makes an astute guess about Keaton’s new name at the fancy hotel he’s now staying at, she starts trolling him in return. Through the help of a clueless maid, she manages to get into his room and learns everything she needs to know. Suddenly, he’s the vulnerable one flipping out. Keaton’s less effective as the unhinged albeit reluctant psycho who makes the stupid mistake of going back to their Victorian home to get his revenge in the inevitably conventional climax. At least we are spared the Undead Dead cliche.
Modine and Griffith are an obvious mismatch on-screen. The chemistry just isn’t there. Furthermore, we don’t really care about them. The couple has a close Black friend but Modine views the Black cop trying to get the second apartment as a potential con artist to be leery of. Maybe that explains why he doesn’t look down at the ground to spot his filled out credit report.
Their coupling does inspire a very funny moment when a private display of affection is witnessed by their judgy next-door neighbours who are probably wondering why they don’t have a curtain on their window.
Griffith learns Keaton has a history of making people miserable including his own wealthy family who want nothing to do with him. His manipulation of Modine is not original. As it turns out, the tactic was way more successful in the past where at least he got a cash settlement from an earlier sap. There’s talk of a lawsuit against Modine as well but nothing more is said or done. With no more lifelines from his family, Keaton hustles at other people’s expense to survive.
Here’s something I don’t understand. Is it normal for a con artist to have his complete family history in his briefcase at all times just so someone can conveniently put together the full narrative of his past? Also, considering how high profile a person he is, how has he been able to get away with this shit his entire life? That’s his picture with his real name next to a major story in the fucking paper. I mean, granted, this movie came out before the World Wide Web was even created but surely, a trip to the library or city hall would provide a lot of these answers, no?
Keaton is several steps ahead of Modine and Griffith at least in the first hour, but once he is exposed and starts unraveling, you realize his sense of control was always an illusion. He was always one misstep away from completely falling apart. How much better this movie would’ve been if it found a more incisive way of conveying that rather than limiting itself to the parameters of a formula thriller.
Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
6:27 p.m.
THE WRITINGS OF DENNIS EARL 