There is a rivalry between Burton Cooper (Dabney Coleman) and his boss CIA director Ross (Charles Durning). Maddy (Lori Singer) is one of Cooper's agents. Cooper is able to doublecross Ross by getting a CIA agent arrested for cocaine smuggling in Morocco. The Senate calls on Ross to testify and he has 48 hours. Ross intends to misdirect Cooper by sending him on a wild goose chase. Ross' second Brown (Edward Herrmann) picks random guy at the airport, Richard Drew (Tom Hanks),the man with one red shoe. Richard is a violinist having an affair with his best friend Morris (Jim Belushi)'s wife Paula (Carrie Fisher). Cooper swallows the bait whole as his team struggles to discover what evidence Richard has against him.
Tom Hanks is playing an everyman. If this movie works at all, it is due to his charms. At times, it tries to be a screwball comedy but it never gets to be outright funny. It's nice ... like Hanks. He's never unleashed and neither is the movie.
The Man with One Red Shoe
1985
Action / Comedy / Thriller
The Man with One Red Shoe
1985
Action / Comedy / Thriller
Plot summary
Cooper, the deputy director of the CIA, wants to be the director. So, he tries to make it appear that the director is corrupt so that he will resign or be removed. The director appears before a committee and asks for some time to prepare his defense. The director goes home and asks his man Brown to join him. He then shows Brown that Cooper is bugging him. That's when he decides to turn the tables on Cooper by feeding him some false information. And that information is that there's a man, who might be able to clear him of the charges against him, will be arriving at the airport, so he tells Brown to meet him. The Director tells Brown to just pick someone who is arriving at the airport thus making Cooper believe that he is the man who can help the director. Brown picks Richard cause he is wearing mismatched shoes, one of them being red. So Cooper sets up surveillance on Richard and sends his femme fatale, Maddy to come on to him and find out what he knows. While Maddy is playing, Richard actually falls for her.
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nice guy Hanks
Great Cast, But Average Movie
A man picked randomly out of a crowd is made the target of CIA surveillance and pursuit.
As Tom Hanks himself acknowledges, the movie is not that good. The plot is okay, but a bit convoluted. The comedy is more often of the absurd kind, and I am not sure it always succeeds. Jim Belushi is rather the strong point of the comedy parts. Also, as 1980s movies end to do, a romance is thrown in for some reason... it seems somewhat forced.
What makes this movie worth watching, despite the "blah" of the overall plot and comedy, is the ensemble cast. Tom Hanks may be the star, but he probably doesn't have 50% of the screen time, because he is sharing it with Dabney Coleman, Jim Belushi, Carrie Fisher (in a small role),Charles Durning, Ed Hermann, Lori Singer, Gerrit Graham and more I'm not recalling at the moment. It is a truly impressive cast.
induces some laughs, but the original is still better
In this remake of the French comedy "The Tall Blonde Man with One Black Shoe", Tom Hanks plays a violinist who randomly gets selected as a spy, leading the government to turn his life upside down. There are certainly some really funny scenes here - namely anything involving plumbing - but it's really undesirable when Hollywood remakes a foreign movie. "The Man with One Red Shoe" is pretty characteristic of Tom Hanks's career before he got into serious roles: innocuously silly.
So, I recommend the original, but this one isn't bad. Just don't expect any kind of religious experience. Also starring Lori Singer, Dabney Coleman, Charles Durning, Edward Herrmann, Carrie Fisher, James Belushi and David Ogden Stiers.