The Mean Season (1985) a (very) belated review

Back in 1985 Kurt Russell starred in The Mean Season, a crime drama/thriller set in Miami.  Mr. Russell was coming off quite a string of successful (if not always financially!) films, including at least three I consider among his best ever, 1980’s Used Cars, 1981’s Escape From New York, and 1982’s The Thing.

In The Mean Season Mr. Russell is Malcolm Anderson, a “burned out” reported for the fictional newspaper The Miami Journal who has just flown in from a small town in Colorado.  He likes it there and intends to quit his job in Miami and move to the quieter Colorado locale, but is convinced to look into the fresh case of a murdered teen whose body was found on the beach.  Anderson writes the story and tells his girlfriend Christene (Mariel Hemingway) this will be his last work for the Journal and they’ll be on their way very soon.

It proves a promise he cannot keep.

For the teen’s killer contacts Anderson and informs him that this is only the first of five murders he intends to commit. With the police leaning hard on him and the murderer making Anderson a celebrity, a game of cat and mouse between the principles ensues…Will Anderson help the police capture this sadistic and very clever killer, or will he become the killer’s target?

I had good, but vague, memories of The Mean Season from having watched it once or twice -or perhaps fragments of it- many years before.  When I noticed it was being played on cable, uncut, I set the DVR to record and it didn’t take me too long to give it the movie a look.  Why the eagerness?  In 1985 I started living in Miami full time, so I have a strong sense of nostalgia for that time and the area and I was hoping the film would offer some good memories.

Unfortunately The Mean Season, unlike the TV show Miami Vice, doesn’t dwell heavily on the sights and sounds of Miami of that time.  Sure, we’re given glimpses of places here and there (including Joe’s Stone Crabs and a view of the Miami skyline, much less busy than it is today), but the film tends to spend most of its time within various rooms and offices, which is a real shame.  In the end, one wonders why the producers bothered to set the film in Miami…it could have easily taken place in just about any big city.

The story is interesting, but the execution was rather…mediocre.  While almost every actor involved in the film does well in their roles, I felt they were playing characters rather than actual people.  The killer is evil and cunning, but we never really get a sense of what makes him tick.  Kurt Russell’s Anderson is a milquetoast reporter and it is not easy to root for someone who basically lets the prevailing winds blow him around.  Mariel Hemingway is the girlfriend who, predictably, sees that this story is leading her boyfriend down some very dark paths and of course it is only a matter of time before she became a target.  Finally, the detectives on the case (including a very young Andy Garcia) are also presented as characters rather than people, your typical “dedicated cops” who have seen the dark side of the world and will blow up at Anderson for his at times foolish ways.

The Mean Season proved a decent enough film that, unfortunately, you’ve seen many times before and since with varying degrees of skill (for example, while far more grisly, this film shares many of the elements found in Se7en).  The Mean Season falls right in the middle, neither terribly good nor terribly bad.  In fact, it winds up being so middle of the road that it could easily have been a TV movie featuring far less known actors if not for some salty language, one completely gratuitous -and very brief- nude scene involving Mariel Hemingway, and a small bit of gore that for 1985 audiences was probably strong but today could be shown on TV without much of a problem.

In the end, The Mean Season turned out to be a case where nostalgia was best left alone.