Cocktail With Rum and Cyanide

By RICHARD CORLISS

MIAMI BLUES Directed and Written by George Armitage

This is an "only" movie. It does nothing important, like contributing to racial harmony or revealing decade-old Soviet naval secrets. It declines to offer the machine-tooled warmth of your standard screen romance. It won't even keep the kids occupied on a Saturday afternoon. Miami Blues, a pint-size character comedy with a body count, is only a terrific picture.

Three characters, all certified originals. The first, Frederick J. Frenger Jr. (Alec Baldwin), is also certifiable. "A blithe psychopath," in the words of Charles Willeford's spiffy source novel, Junior is fresh out of a California prison and primed for Miami vice. His M.O.: robs crooks who have robbed other people. Thinks he's smart; isn't. Has grousy temper; will break the finger of an unsuspecting airport Hare Krishna. Can compose haiku during his heists -- "Breaking, entering/ The dark and lonely places/ Finding a big gun" -- but can't choreograph a decent holdup. Junior is an engaging monster, a clown in his own horror show. As his nemesis, Miami detective Hoke Moseley (Fred Ward), mutters, "I'd hate to meet Senior."

Hoke is a grizzled cop, a down-market Columbo, ill at ease in the new Miami of drug millions and Hispanic flash. Junior, who has stolen Hoke's gun, badge and false teeth, is just the sort of criminal throwback Hoke understands. But Junior's girl Susie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is a mystery. A sweet cracker from upstate, this Princess Not-So-Bright is grateful to Junior for the minutest graces: he eats her cooking and doesn't beat her. She and the con are lost souls sharing a postcard vision of Nirvana: a cloudless beach, a dog leaping for a Frisbee, a cruise ship navigating the horizon. Unremarkable. For Junior and Susie, unattainable.

With its slums abutting the sea, its raffish hoodlums and its Day-Glo deco decor, Miami is the city to which all Jonathan Demme films aspire. Married to the Mob ended up there, long after Baldwin had played his memorable cameo as a Mafia stiff. Funny thing is that Demme only produced Miami Blues; his colleague from the Roger Corman B-movie Borstal of the '70s, George Armitage, is the writer-director. Funnier still, Armitage has one-upped his old pal. Whereas Demme's movies punctuate flaky comedy with explosions of violence, Miami Blues blends the two moods in a savory tropical cocktail. What makes the taste so tangy -- the rum or the cyanide?

Armitage has fun with Miami but never makes fun of it. He just stands off at an ironic distance, appreciating the blazing incongruity of an aquacade at a restaurant or a maimed thief pocketing his severed fingertips. The actors too come at their roles energetically, not condescendingly. Baldwin plays Junior with a goofy grin and the scheming intensity of a small mind spinning its wheels and getting nowhere. Ward finds Hoke's integrity down at his heels. And Leigh, a gifted chameleon who deserves stardom, can wring pathos just by reading a recipe for vinegar pie or walking up the path to a house she will never own. Handsomely made, wonderfully acted, Miami Blues is the kind of picture Hollywood ought to be making more of. If only . . .