Features

Fine and Andy

July 1989 Stephen Schiff
Features
Fine and Andy
July 1989 Stephen Schiff

Fine and Andy

SPOTLIGHT

With oil befouling Alaskan waters and the ozone layer shriveling by the second, it may not bother you much that America is also wasting Andy Garcia. Still, can't something be done? Garcia, you see, is an actor, and an extraordinarily powerful one. At thirty-three, he has the kind of hot-wire electricity Al Pacino supplied in his early roles: he can be suave and phlegmatic on the surface without ever letting you forget the fuse fizzing ominously underneath. So why throw him away in the role of a mildly obstinate bureaucrat in the movie Stand and Deliver? Why cast him in The Untouchables only to have him lapdog sweetly behind Sean Connery, playing sidekick to a sidekick? Is this any way to treat one of the two or three most talented up-and-comers in Hollywood?

Of course, the Cuban-bom (American-raised) Garcia brought it on himself. After doing time in TV roles (and in the flop suspense movie The Mean Season), he was ready for something really juicy: in Hal Ashby's last film, 8 Million Ways to Die (1986), he played one of the great screen villains of the eighties, a Gaudi-loving coke dealer with dreamboat eyes, radium in his veins, and the cajoling, demented smile Jerry Lewis wears as the telethon rattles into the wee hours. The Untouchables director, Brian De Palma, watched him tingle and rev and pronounced him a "sensational killer," but Garcia didn't want to be bad anymore. He wanted to play a bashfully grinning, rookie cop, and so he did—beautifully. Still, those of us who saw him devour the screen in 8 Million Ways know he can do more—much more. This summer, he'll show up in Ridley Scott's cops-and-yakuza movie, Black Rain—but only in the sidekick role. Not until early next year will he finally get to star again, this time in Internal Affairs, a police thriller he co-wrote. Let's hope it's good. Something has to teach America to stop squandering its precious natural resources. —STEPHEN SCHIFF

STEPHEN SCHIFF