I really should’ve loved Into the Night.

Starring Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer and directed by John Landis, Into the Night is an action comedy thriller taking place in the nighttime Los Angeles, it has chases, stolen emeralds and such, but as the minutes tick by it starts to become painfully obvious the movie is going nowhere.

The experience is problematic on many levels. First of all, the movie seems to suffer from an identity crisis, never quite knowing if to present itself as a comedy or an action thriller. For a comedy it just lacks the laughs – excluding the scene where Goldblum paces through a movie set like an elephant in a porcelain store – and for an action thriller it’s just much too tame and generic. The overall pacing of the movie is drowsy, even so that the movie grinds to a full halt at times, like when the leading duo sits inside a small tunnel waiting for the sun to set again.

The movie must hold some kind of record for the number of cameos included, but now – over 30 years after its original release – most of them are totally unknown to an average viewer, so instead of adding any value they make the overall experience feel patchy. The hitman character played by David Bowie would’ve suited the movie well, but woefully he’s the only one of the cameos that understays his welcome.

80s-o-meter: 78%

Total: 52%