That the apparent misspelling of her name is not only deliberate but a plot point is an indication of the kind of movie Sharky’s Machine is. Soon the titular apparatus is running multiple off-the-books wiretaps and Sharky finds himself obsessed with Gassman’s pride, the lovely Dominoe (Rachel Ward). They’re content to bust streetwalkers, but Sharky has his sights set on a slick operator (Vittorio Gassman) with ties to the department and local power brokers.
For his sins Sharky is cast into the department’s lowest circle, literally and figuratively: the vice squad, made up of misfits and short-timers. A drug buy arranged by Atlanta narcotics cop Tom Sharky goes chaotically wrong in the opening sequence, which includes some of the loudest gunshots I’ve ever heard in a movie. On the other hand a ninja is shot with a spear gun, which I chalk up as a considerable improvement.īurt Reynolds directs as well as stars in this adaptation of a novel by William Diehl. Like so much I learned on the schoolyard, this is completely untrue.
The scene was described to me in such detail that I remembered it lo these many years later. At some point, a guy has a piece of glass shoved into his mouth and is then punched repeatedly in the face. Going into this movie I knew one thing, which I’d heard from a classmate who’d watched it on cable.
