New York in the 1980s makes you think of grimy streets
and a Times Square overrun by prostitutes, pimps and sex shows. To walk through
those streets of Manhattan now is like another world compared to what’s on
screen in Street Smart, a long
forgotten 1987 film starring Christopher Reeve as a magazine reporter who gets
unwittingly mixed up in the seedy underworld after committing a truly
dunderheaded act of stupidity.
It is that depiction of New York along with the stilted
dialogue by David Freeman that makes this film feel very dated. Reeve plays
Jonathan Fisher who we first meet pitching story ideas to his editor in one of
those scenes that completely misunderstands how magazines are put together and
how journalism happens. Jonathan exhausts his legitimate ideas as his boss has
little interest in any of the excruciatingly boring ideas he has. Construction
cranes? So Jonathan claims to know a pimp who will give him access for an
expose on a day in the life.
Having only the weekend to find a pimp and get a juicy
story out of him turns out to be not as easy as Jonathan expected. What a
shock! No one on the street is willing to talk and he very nearly gets his head
kicked in. I find it hard to believe that any journalist living in Manhattan
would be so naïve as to think he could fish a story like this. Then he
unbelievably brings his girlfriend Alison (Mimi Rogers) along with him to see
what it’s like. After she is nearly assaulted by a thug in a dive bar they decide
maybe it was a bad idea.
As if this didn’t defy credulity enough, Jonathan files a
completely bogus piece that his editor adores so much he now thinks the crane
story is a brilliant idea! Freeman’s screenplay doesn’t bother to flesh out
Jonathan’s character enough to give us any reason to believe he would make a
leap from supposedly decent reporter to total fraud in the space of one
weekend. In the years since Street Smart
was made we’ve seen examples in Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair that these
things tend to start small and grow with time and confidence.
He finagles his newfound fame into a gig doing a prime
spot on TV news in which he exposes minor frauds and captures stories from the
street that other journalists aren’t getting in a program called “Street Smart.”
Then by some miracle of fate, Jonathan’s story bears such close resemblance to
an actual pimp nicknamed Fast Black (Morgan Freeman) that not only does the
District Attorney who’s trying to convict him for murder recognize the man, but
also to Black’s defense attorney! The DA actually comes knocking on Jonathan’s
apartment door. No, he doesn’t contact him at the magazine’s office, you know,
the magazine where the story was actually published? Sorry, I remain
incredulous. Because of these attorneys’ beliefs and the fact that for obvious
reasons Jonathan is loath to admit the truth, he gets mired in the court case
with a judge who wants him to turn over his notes to aid with the conviction and
Fast Black wants him to write phony notes to help with the defense.
Jerry Schatzberg’s direction of the street scenes and
just about everything involving Fast Black keeps the film somewhat grounded in
reality. Morgan Freeman anchors the movie more than anything Schatzberg or
Freeman could have concocted. His Fast Black is menacing, but charismatic. That’s
how we can sort of believe Jonathan gets so easily pulled into his world. When
Freeman is on screen there’s always tension because we don’t know when Black is
going to turn on a dime and do something violent. Kathy Baker plays Punchy, one
of Black’s prostitutes who takes a liking to Jonathan. He goes to Punchy as a
journalist and ends up as a client in a scene that has you cringing because you
know he cares about Alison, but also completely understanding of how a man in
his position could so easily fall into that trap.
As a minor time capsule in the history of cinema Street Smart has some marginal value. It’s
worth seeing Freeman in his first Oscar-nominated role and to see genuine
risk-taking from an actor we now know best for playing the consummate “Magical
Negro” roles. But again, Freeman’s handle on journalism is so tenuous it makes
parts of the story simply preposterous. How does a man who fabricates an entire
story for print journalism get to continue in the profession on television and
covering a story for which he was an integral player without even a hint of
disclosure to the viewers? Yes, the ending takes absurdity to a new level.
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