SHORT TAKES

BUSTING (United Artists):: You probably think that the hardest part about being a vice cop is getting your face busted in by junkies or some big time dealers trying to blow your brains out in a crowded supermarket. Well, it’s not. The hardest part of being a vice cop is filling your mouth with bubble gum and philosophy with a punky put-on attitude and not looking like an asshole. In Elliot Gould’s latest, Busting, he intermittently does both. Robert Blake, as his partner, continually draws on an unlit Pall Mall and plays straight man to Gould’s humor, which runs from lowkeyed to plain buried. Both cops go after Mr. Big and find themselves stymied by his political connections. But after busting a couple of hookers and losing a C minus shoot out, they finally nail Rizzo (Mr. Big) in an ambulence chase scene almost as exciting as Gould’s bubble gum chewing. The tiresome duo discover the moral of the tiresome plot, that, shorn do be dom du du, busting up is hard to do.

Harvey Zuppke