SEA OF LOVE (1989)

Back in the late-1980s, legendary actor Al Pacino’s star status was starting to look a little less bright. The once-golden boy of Tinseltown with films like The Godfather (1972), Serpico (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), and Dog Day Afternoon (1975), hadn’t had a hit since Scarface (1983)… and that had been his only success during this decade.

William Friedkin’s controversial Cruising (1980) got bad reviews and even worse revenue, while British director Hugh Hudson’s Revolution (1985) went down in history as one of the biggest flops ever made. At a budget of $28M, it only grossed $350,000 in ticket sales. Such was the level of its failure—commercially and critically—that Pacino nearly gave up acting for good. Luckily, due to novelist-turned-screenwriter Richard Price and producer Martin Bregman, the Italian-American actor found commercial and critical success once again with the New York-based cop thriller Sea of Love.

The film’s opening doesn’t waste any time: similar to Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), it begins with the camera looming into an apartment window, however here it’s night-time. In the background, you can hear the 1959 Phil Phillips record “Sea of Love” playing, the camera then moves into the bedroom and you see a man looking like he’s having sex. He stops and looks up to say: “Is that okay?” and then a gun appears behind him and shoots him dead. The track comes to an end for a few seconds before the record player starts playing it again.

Thanks to Richard Price’s economic screenplay, nothing seems overblown or obvious—but what you’re left with is a sense of mystery and slight foreboding. This underplayed tension that plays throughout is one of the stronger elements of the film. What occurs in the next scene also highlights how good the script is by employing clever ‘show but don’t tell’ writing to portray some of the protagonist’s personality.

After the opening murder sequence, the film then jumps to the daytime and in some large undisclosed building there’s a group of people being signed into what they think is a New York Yankees ‘have breakfast with the team’ event. When in fact it is a set-up by the police to catch a group of felons who have a series of outstanding arrest warrants. Afterwards, when Pacino’s Keller is about to head off with his colleagues, a man with his son runs up to the building’s entrance. The man’s name is on their list for grand theft auto crimes but Keller says there’s no more room and quickly flashes his police badge to the guy – who then obviously walks away. With this one tiny act, the script smartly shows us that Keller has a compassionate side to him and that, despite being a professional cop, he also didn’t want the man’s son to witness his arrest.

Alongside this sharp character reveal, the sting scene also shows us that Keller has been on the force for twenty years (which fact is used further in the film) when a colleague announces it on stage, just after the big reveal to the criminals that they’ve been set up. Yet again, Price’s script indicates that a little brevity can go a long way.

Like Pacino, Richard Price grew up in the Bronx: a self-described ‘lower middle-class Jewish kid’, Price started his career writing novels; his first being a 1974 coming-of-age story titled The Wanderers which was then adapted into a film in 1979. His script for Sea of Love was taken from his novel Ladies’ Man, however much of the original story was changed; the biggest alteration being taking the lead character, a door-to-door salesman, and making him a detective for the film.

Other notable titles that Price produced included a 1992 novel about drug dealers getting involved with a murder called Clockers—this became a critical 1995 hit for Spike Lee years later—along with screenplays for The Color of Money (1986), Mad Dog and Glory (1993), Ransom (1996), and the remake of Shaft (2000). All of these other scripts were successful movies in their own right and were directed by big-name directors such as Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard.

Perhaps one of the reasons behind Price’s strong hit rate is his ‘authentic’ style of writing. As he was starting as a novelist, an early notable influence was Hubert Selby Jr.’s 1964 novel Last Exit to Brooklyn, a powerhouse tale involving tough union thugs, sex workers and transvestites—immediately, he saw strong parallels in the story from his own life growing up in a racially mixed Bronx housing project and decided, from that point on, he would only write about things he was familiar with.

This gritty warts-and-all approach is demonstrated perfectly in Sea of Love: you see Pacino’s Keller and the far-from-perfect world he inhabits; his life as a New York detective and the way he interacts with his colleagues speaks volumes. Nothing feels forced or false—in fact, the aforementioned sting operation was inspired by a real-life event that took place in 1985, involving the US Marshalls Service and Washington police that culminated with the arrest of 101 wanted fugitives.

Following the sting operation scene, we see Pacino’s Keller sitting up late alone in his apartment, clearly drunk, and still drinking. Despite it being 1 a.m, he phones his ex-wife Denise, and when she answers he says he has appendicitis—she can tell he’s drunk and so immediately hangs up. Once again, within about a minute of screen time, Price’s concise screenplay tells us Keller is lonely, probably has a drinking problem, and misses his ex-wife.

As the film progresses, Keller and his colleague Gruber (Richard Jenkins) are called to investigate the body of the first murdered victim. It’s here, by way of a simple back-and-forth conversation, that we learn that Gruber is the man who Keller’s ex-wife got involved with and eventually married. Keller is clearly hurting over this fact, along with his recent 20th anniversary of being on the force. Subsequently, there are a few heated words spoken.

Before long, there’s another murder, this time in the Queens district of New York. Keller connects with Detective Sherman Touhey from the local precinct there, played by John Goodman, who was then still best known for playing Dan in the hit TV show Roseanne (1988-1997; 2018), Touhey tells Keller that, like the first victim in Manhattan, his victim used the singles ads in a paper and thinks they should work together on the case. Whether it was for real or just good acting, Pacino and Goodman make for a good partnership on screen. Their characters immediately strike up a friendship which seems very believable, and this helps introduce some levity into the film.

Keller comes up with a plan to write his own love poem ad for the singles column and go out on a few dates, get the fingerprints off a wine glass, and hopefully catch the killer in the process. His boss eventually agrees, and Keller, Touhey, and some other detectives spend an evening together trying to come up with an effective poem. Price’s writing here once again gives the scene a great level of believability—especially when we see Keller’s elderly father (William Hickey) interrupt their conversation with a touching poem his late wife thought up that may have been responsible for bringing them together. The poem is an immediate hit with all concerned, and they decide to use it.

The series of dates begins and, after a few disastrous meetings, which make for a few laughs, Keller is about to quit when in walks Helen Cruger, played by Ellen Barkin. To say she makes an impression is something of an understatement; her sexy red leather jacket worn over a slinky black dress shows off the attractive actress’s physique perfectly. Pacino’s Keller is wowed by her beauty, and yet their first encounter ends badly as Helen is not that impressed with Keller, saying there’s no spark or animal attraction. He tries to get her to take a sip from her wine, however she’s not having any of it and quickly exits the restaurant.

A few days later, Keller is shopping in a supermarket when Helen sees him and starts up a conversation. Here, she seems more interested in him, and they both decide to head out to a bar for a drink. It’s during this scene that you see Helen is definitely in seductress mode, and Keller is falling for her fast. The dialogue, once again, comes over as naturalistic and real, and the on-screen chemistry from Pacino and Barkin does a lot of the heavy lifting in making the sequence come alive. They decide to go to Keller’s apartment, but before they do, Helen says she has to phone her mother who’s on childcare duties. While she’s doing so, Keller quickly calls Touhey to say what’s happening; he is alarmed at the news, saying that Helen is still technically a suspect so he needs to back off now. Keller says he will, but goes off with her anyway.

In the apartment, things get even steamier when the pair start getting physical with each other. Just as Helen asks to use the bathroom, she quickly grabs her handbag, but as she walks past Keller, he spies what looks like a gun. Immediately, he starts to panic, thinking she’s now definitely the killer. While Helen is inside the bathroom with the door closed, Pacino switches his acting up a gear as he starts pacing between the bed and the bathroom door, muttering to himself, “Oh my God, oh fuck, what am I going to do?” As the seconds tick by, he gets more agitated and pulls out his gun, rushing to the door as Helen starts to come out. Keller grabs her and forces her handbag out of her hand as he pushes her into a closet and locks the door. At first, she’s scared, but then anger takes over as she screams to be let out. Keller examines her bag to discover that what he thought was a gun was only a sports starting pistol.

Helen is furious at Keller as he opens the door, but as he explains that he panicked from thinking it was a gun, she soon calms down and starts kissing him—cue passionate scene—but unlike something like Basic Instinct (1992), the sequence is fairly modest and sensitively directed. There’s no lingering camera on Barkin’s naked body, and it’s all over soon enough, giving way to the ‘morning after’ scene which makes for some nice back-and-forth dialogue with the two actors. They seem to like each other and agree to see each other again. After Helen has left, Keller quickly tells Touhey that the evening went well, but as he’s about to put the coffee cup in an evidence bag, he changes his mind and leaves it, he’s already decided that she’s innocent, but how can he be so sure?

Once again, such is the quality of the script, that it’s at this point, about halfway through the film, that you’re still no wiser about who the killer is. But, despite the murders, everything here feels believable. You discover Helen is a divorced single mother working as a high-end shoe store manager, just trying to get by and make the best of her situation, and Keller, after being single and smarting from his divorce, throws caution to the wind and happily starts up a proper relationship with this very attractive woman.

Soon enough, though, something goes wrong when Keller goes to Helen’s workplace to ask her on another date when one of her customers—some gangster type—recognises him and makes a scene before leaving the store. Helen, thinking he was only a printer after Keller lied to her to hide his identity, is angry. After he lies again to explain the reason behind his ‘printer story’ (because previous relationships have gone sour from past girlfriends not liking his cop occupation), she soon calms down but says he better not lie to her ever again.

Do things run smoothly from this point on? Of course not, but during the rest of the film’s runtime, and right up to the inevitable conclusion when the identity of the killer is finally revealed, the pacing of the film nicely lets the story roll along, giving the relationship part of the proceedings plenty of breathing space which, ultimately, is the smart move as this is the heart of the movie. Yes, you want to know who the killer is, but because of Pacino and Barkin’s strong performances, you care about what’s going on with them—-and that’s what gives the film the edge over lesser cop thriller fare.

Perhaps it’s no accident that all the pieces of the film come together so well when you look at who else was involved in the production: aside from Richard Price, the two other main creative forces are director Harold Becker and producer Martin Bregman. One could argue that, while having a decent resume of films, including Taps (1981), Malice (1993), and another Pacino vehicle, City Hall (1996), Becker could be best described as a solid ‘journeyman’ filmmaker—with most of his films turning a profit. However, Sea of Love proved to be Becker’s biggest success, bringing in a healthy $111M at the box office from a modest budget of just $19M.

Producer Martin Bregman’s career is something else, though. Also heralding from the Bronx, Bregman started as an insurance salesman before entering the entertainment business as a nightclub agent. Meeting New York real estate magnate Lewis Rudin proved to be a positive move as he soon got into personal management, going on to represent such stars as Woody Allen, Barbara Streisand, Faye Dunaway, and after seeing him in an off-Broadway play, Al Pacino. Bregman was responsible for getting Pacino his first film role in Picnic in Needle Park (1971), a role that none other than Robert De Niro had auditioned for. It would be the start of a long and illustrious partnership and one that would lead to some of Pacino’s most prominent roles in films like Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Carlito’s Way (1993).

Audiences watching Sea of Love now may think it has a straight-to-streaming feel about it, in that it’s a relatively simple story with a satisfying, but still not that surprising, finale. However, while it may be true that in today’s theatrical climate, this would struggle to see a big-screen release, it still has a great cast (Pacino and Barkin together make for some truly compelling viewing), a cracking script, and the film’s near two-hour runtime zips along at a pace. Admittedly, the saxophone-heavy score may be a little cheesy and sound old-fashioned, but that aside, this late-’80s thriller still provides plenty of suspense and entertainment that could easily rival any of Netflix’s quality output.

USA • CANADA | 1989 | 114 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Harold Becker.
writer: Richard Price (based on his novel ‘Ladies’ Man’)
starring: Al Pacino, Ellen Barki, John Goodman, Michael Rooker, William Hickey, Richard Jenkins, John Spencer & Michael O’Neill.