MOVIE REVIEW : ‘8 MILLION WAYS’ TO KILL A BLOODY, VIOLENT FILM

There is a germ of an idea at the core of “8 Million Ways to Die” (citywide): cop burn-out and AA recovery. And probably no first-class actor can look burned out better than Jeff Bridges: Spittle collecting at the corner of his mouth, with ugly gashes from falls he doesn’t even remember, he’s the young alcoholic incarnate. He is, as ever, marvelous, but that’s the only good thing you can say for the film.

During one or another of “8 Million Ways to Die’s” infinite stretches, as grown men hurl that flat, charmless epithet into each other’s eye sockets, one’s mind meanders into a few questions.

How did this script ever get made? Did no one read it? OK, so the Lawrence Block books with their cop-hero, Matthew Scudder, have had their following. And that screenwriting master of the F-String, Oliver (“Scarface”) Stone, of the old Anglo-Saxonism Stones, has his.

But surely it’s not good form to recycle old “Scarface” screaming exchanges, and call that a movie. Surely you can’t dress up all those drug dealers in those white suits yet again--don’t Al Pacino’s suits have bullet holes clear through them?

Director Hal Ashby tries to pump tension into Bridges’ spiral into alcoholism and redemption after killing a suspect in the line of duty, but it’s an impossibility. This script, the work of Stone and David Lee Henry, defeats his every effort.

“8 Million Ways to Die” is a ponderous, convoluted improbability, with more inexplicable actions and situations than “The Big Sleep,” which is the last time those two films will ever be mentioned in the same sentence.

The novels’ trademark New York settings have been shifted to Los Angeles, which is crammed with young, expensive hookers (Rosanna Arquette, Alexandra Paul) who either do or do not want to leave The Life; ominous Latino drug dealers by the limousine-load (a ponytailed Andy Garcia among them), and smooth black gambler/businessmen (Randy Brooks) who either are or are not also pimps. What boggles the mind is how all this “Miami Vice” bloodshed and villainy can be so soporific.

The film has a single distinguishing moment. In between the cops, the killers, the heroin dealers, the SWAT team and the gamblers all hissing or screaming the “Scarface” epithet in overlapping dialogue, we’re suddenly taken through the blissful plaster swirls of a house designed by Antonio Gaudi.

The production designer must be having a lovely joke. Surely what they wanted was a gaudy house. Ah well, can’t lose them all.