The Real McCoy (1993)
You’re at a motel in a town where you don’t know anyone. It’s raining. There’s nothing to do except scrutinize TV. You turn it on, find a movie. It’s an fighting scenario, not too unhealthy, and keeps you from falling asleep for the next hour and a half.
“The Real McCoy” could fit quite nicely into this scenario; it has the feel of a made-for-TV movie.
Kim Basinger stars as Karen McCoy, a high-tech bank robber who emerges from a six-year stretch in a Georgia prison looking more like a movie star than a convict. The actress plays it strong, silent and fairly one-dimensional.
She’s been set up by her evil ex-partner, Jack Schmidt, but now that she has her freedom he wants McCoy to help him pull off one more heist. Schmidt is played by veteran character actor Terence Stamp, who apparently thought adding a German accent to his native British would make him sound as if he was from below the Mason-Dixon line. It doesn’t.
Poor Karen wants only to lead a clean life and see her son, but things just aren’t that simple. Her ex-husband has remarried and told their boy that Mom is dead. Ouch. The man is also a ludicrous half-wit; imagining that these two were ever together is absurd, and the freckled, cereal-commercial child they’ve produced looks nothing like either parent.
Then along comes the best thing about the film, Val Kilmer as J.T. Barker, the bumbling holdup man who worships the legendary McCoy for her criminal prowess. This guy can’t even rob a Dixie Mini Mart without the clip falling out of his gun. Kilmer, like Gary Busey and Nicolas Cage, has a non-pretty-boy look that makes him believable in a white trash kind of way. He also has the two lines in the film that are actually funny — the one thing he can steal is the show.
Now get this — Karen’s fat slob parole officer (Gailard Sartain) turns out to be not only a misogynist, but in cahoots with Schmidt. They kidnap her kid, blackmailing the gorgeous ex-con into masterminding the $18 million caper. She enlists J.T., but — guess what — they’ve got a plan of their own!
The film has a flair for the obvious. All the tired elements of the action flick are here: fast cars (driven in the rain a lot), ugly bad guys, dumb cops, cheap suspense. And the soundtrack is vintage “Rockford Files” chase scene fare. Oh well, since she lost an arm and a leg in the “Boxing Helena” fiasco, Basinger can be expected to take on a dog or two to pay the rent. And that’s the real McCoy.
