Mad Dog and Glory Correctly Allowed Bill Murray to Be the Bad Guy

Bill Murray had only been making movies for 15 years in 1993, and twice as much time has passed since then. But befitting the weariness he would increasingly adopt and then fully embrace by the end of the decade, his comic persona felt increasingly worn out. Not in the sense that audiences were tired of his shtick so much as maybe Murray was tired of his audiences. Quick Change, which he co-directed, was a sardonic comedy of frustration about three criminals attempting to escape New York City, and barely anyone went to see it. Plenty of people went to see Ghostbusters II, and Murray gamely attempted to entertain them, but there was a sense that he might have wished that they, or he, had stayed home. When he followed up his 1991 hit What About Bob? with two of his best-ever performances, it seemed like Murray was back in top form. Yet his pair of 1993 triumphs, Groundhog Day and Mad Dog and Glory, don’t necessarily paint a portrait of a man reinvigorated by love of his craft. Appropriately, Murray reached a career peak by leaning into the dissatisfaction that comes from not knowing how to break out of your own prison.

The more famous trap is the time-loop of Groundhog Day. Murray’s dyspeptic, checked-out weatherman Phil Connors travels to small-town Pennsylvania to cover Groundhog Day ceremonies, only to keep waking up on February 2nd, day after day. Most comedy fans know the deal as Phil cycles through the same day, hundreds of times: He’s confused, frustrated, liberated, damned and then, finally, reborn, as a man dedicated to winning the heart of his coworker (Andie MacDowell), which can only really stick if he learns how to live as a better man. Though ostensibly a romantic comedy, it’s a perfect solo comic vehicle, especially for a performer who has often seemed downright distrustful of solo comic vehicles. If Scrooged, five years earlier, was a scattershot SNL gloss on A Christmas Carol that felt like it somehow turned into a Nick the Lounge Singer Holiday Special by the end, Groundhog Day was that story looped and honed into perfection. It remains the platonic ideal of the Bill Murray Comedy–perhaps, given the dramatic overtones of Life Aquatic and Lost in Translation and the ensemble nature of Ghostbusters, the only pure one he ever made.

Mad Dog and Glory, however, was something else. It hinges on a casting gimmick so inspired that a collective lack of audience interest seems flabbergasting: Robert De Niro plays a likable little guy opposite Bill Murray as a tough gangster. De Niro had certainly shown plenty of range, and would later dip into both comedies and character parts, but 30 years ago, Mad Dog and Glory arrived not long after the sweaty menace of Cape Fear and not long before the icy cool of Casino and Heat. He makes himself look smaller and meeker, somehow, as Wayne, a Chicago cop ironically nicknamed “Mad Dog” by his colleagues, who specializes in crime scene photography and doesn’t feel especially comfortable pulling a weapon.

But pull a weapon he does when he happens into a convenience-store robbery threatening the life of Frank Milo (Murray), a local hood. Frank recovers from his initial disdain—Murray’s heckling of both cop and robber is a perfect crystallization of both his character and his persona–and befriends Wayne, eventually sending over a thank-you gift that doubles as a power move: Glory (Uma Thurman), a young woman whom Frank “owns” as part of a debt settlement. She’s not Frank’s girl, but she does what he says, and he says to stay with Wayne for a week. Wayne is uncomfortable at first, and tries to brush her off. But Frank gets his way, and Glory sticks around. Wayne and Glory falling in love, however, is not part of Frank’s way.

Every performance in Mad Dog and Glory is note perfect; it’s a big part of what makes such a beguiling series of character studies out of potentially dodgy material, along with crack dialogue from screenwriter Richard Price and patient direction from John McNaughton. But Murray, despite disappearing for much of the movie’s midsection so that Wayne and Glory can have their alone time together, makes a particularly strong impression. In addition to handling various shady money matters, Frank is a part-time stand-up comic (he owns a comedy club, seemingly to indulge this hobby). It sounds like a gimmick designed to give Murray an outlet for shtick–the kind of thing lesser Robin Williams vehicles used to cede to their star. But Murray and the screenplay make Frank’s indulgence utterly believable. In a lovely touch, Wayne clocks Frank’s actual material as a pastiche of familiar jokes with a mafia-themed spin, perfect for a hood accustomed to helping himself. His delivery, though, takes advantage of Murray’s hipster attitude; Frank tries to affect a slick, too-cool indifference as he razzes goombah stereotypes. Again, the movie has Wayne provide some insight, advising Frank to try “punching in” rather than out, an early version of the “punching up”/”punching down” conversation that was ground into tedium a few years ago.