Review of Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) by Adam M — 07 May 2013

About an hour in, Morarty goes off the rails and Cohen gives up on plotting and good dialogue. But until then, it's one of the most unique genre movies ever, taking a totally different angle of storytelling, in the plot, in the kind of dialogue that carries us from scene to scene, in the shots of parts of New York City that create the whole, in the super high and low angles and aerial shots that are all different than we've seen before and all perfect for pulling the characterizations and the monster threat together.

The other half of what makes Q unique is the adventurous, voracious performance of Michael Moriarty. If Ratzo Rizzo was over-thought-out acting which Hoffman's second thoughts would have turned down a notch, here we get urban lowlife Jimmy Quinn and the opposite mistake. It's a method-like performance that is totally feeling driven, and might reach too much into Morarity's own reserves as an eccentric gone crazy. For a while, Quinn ( -- starts with "Q" -- ) is a amazing creation, and since he's more ordinary guy than crook, he has our empathy, and we like when he becomes a bit of a kook -- it's the common man's way of being Danny Kaye. But Quinn gets more selfish and annoying and resentful of how life has treated him, and empathy distills into pity, which is half chore. I started empathizing with the monster, who was too majestic to get shot down like Edward G. Robinson and had the whole city against him, even Jimmy Quinn.