Dead Horses

By RICHARD CORLISS

ROUGH CUT

Directed by Don Siegel Screenplay by Francis Burns

Burt Reynolds, everybody's favorite Everyman, has often expressed his desire to become the Cary Grant of the '80s. Lesley-Anne Down, with her Cool Whip body and a mouth that seems always on the verge of an indecent proposal, must have been told she could be the next Grace Kelly. Don Siegel, who makes diamond-hard action movies, has always wanted to direct an elegant, light-fingered comedy like the Grant-Kelly To Catch a Thief. For all anyone knows, Ernest Borgnine wishes he were Fred Astaire. But wishes aren't horses--and if they were, Rough Cut would be an also-ran.

Larry Gelbart's original script--about a couple of high-society crooks, their $30 million heist and the wily Scotland Yard inspector (David Niven) who dogs their trail--may have meant to revive the old Hitchcock tradition of sophisticated comedy. But so frail a genre is more style than substance, and Siegel's trooper-boot direction flattens out the laugh lines and bits of business until they have all the charm of an airport runway. Gelbart was smart enough to remove his name from the credits (hence the screenwriter pseudonym). Reynolds was not so lucky.

His all-American good humor seems forced here -- as if he had wandered into his own funeral and resolved to brazen it out. --By Richard Corliss

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