Dirty Deals, Murder, Mob Goons, and a Kidnapping: Men at Work (1990)

Dirty deals, murder, mob goons, and kidnapping

So I was surfing through Amazon recommendations and I saw this starred Emilio Estevez and his brother Charlie Sheen, and was written by Emilio Estevez, I just had to watch it.

{Picture from Ringu)

I am so glad I did as this was hilarious!

I love Emilio Estevez, I always have ,so anything with him in it, I’m down for.

So we start the film off with a meeting between gangster rich guy, Maxwell Potterdam III (John Getz) and the Mayor running for reelection. Potterdam what kind of name is that for an evil villain/gangster? Sounds more like a nerd to me.

So Potterdam has been paying the mayor so that he could illegally dump his toxic waste, but the mayor is done with it. Unbeknownst to Potterdam, he’s sneaky and caught the gangster on tape.

Oh, wow…

Hmm…From there we switch to friends and coworkers, Carl Taylor (Charlie Sheen) and James St. James (Emilio Estevez). They share an apartment and Carl likes to stare out the window and watch his neighbors with binoculars, espechially the woman across the way.

Not okay.

He finds her beautiful and has memorized her whole routine-that’s creepy.

SUPER creeped

James and Carl are trashmen and not happy about their job, it pays the bills but what they really want is to have their own surf shop. They are also in a prank war with some other trashmen and have two cops who hate them.

They take care of the trash but are the worst trashmen ever. It is hilarious how they just toss the cans everywhere, go through the trash and take some things, etc.

From Clueless

Meanwhile, the Mayor was approached by his campaign manager, Susan Wilkins (Leslie Hope). She gives him a tape with a rap on it for his campaign but he ignores her, takes the tape he made the night before and takes it to the police chief. He plays it, but you guessed it-he took the wrong tape. He runs out to find Susan-while the police chief contacts Potterdam. Yep, you guessed it-he’s a dirty cop.

The worst!

That night the guys are hanging out and playing trivial pursuit. They notice a ruckus across the way when the mayor comes over. He’s yelling about a tape and pushes Susan. Carl gets upset and when Susan goes downstairs to look for the tape Carl gets his pellet gun and shoots him in the butt.

From Supernatural

The guys laugh as he screams in pain and they hide missing seeing some hitmen come in and garrote the mayor and remove his body.The mob men are supposed to take him and dump his body, but the two hitmen start arguing about music and they don’t realize that they have lost the body, he slips and falls into a trashcan.

That’s not good.

The next day the boys are called in to work early and read the riot act because they’ve had so many complaints. The boss’ brother-in-law needs a job, so he’ll be watching them, Vietnam vet Louis Fedders (Keith David).

They both are having a hard time working with him, as they don’t want to be “observed”. As they are taking out the trash they find the body and think Carl killed him. They both start freaking out.  Can’t they tell he wasn’t shot but garroted?

Thank goodness for the Louis. He points out to the guys that he wasn’t shot but garroted. They decide to take the body with them as hey don’t have a good relationship with the cops. This seems like a very bad idea.

They discuss this and are overheard by rivals at work-uh oh not good.

So they go out to try and discuss what must have happened and I love how Louis gets defensive about his fries. There are something a man (or woman) never shares.

Louis: There are several sacred things in this world that you don’t *ever* mess with. One of them happens to be another man’s fries. Now, you remember that, and you will live a long and healthy life.

They share about what they saw last night and Carl decides to go over and get information from the girl across the apartment. Louis and James will watch from their apartment with the pellet gun in case she turns deadly. Louis turns out to not be helpful to James as he starts to lose his grip on reality and thinking he is in Vietnam again.

That’s not good.

So while the guys are waiting they order a pizza and when he pizza guy delivers it he sees the dead body. Louis ties him up and he is along for the ride.

James: [offering a slice of pizza to the pizza delivery man] Are you hungry? Would you like some?

Louis: [having a Vietnam flashback] Don’t give him any, James.

James: Why not? He might be hungry.

Louis: He’s a prisoner; he should be treated accordingly.

James: Have you completely lost your mind? We’re not soldiers and he’s not the enemy. He’s a pizza man.

So Carl gets with Susan, lying and telling her that he’s a doctor. She’s actually into him and wants to go off to the beach. The rest of the group follows-Louis, James, the Pizza guy, and the dead mayor.

Meanwhile, the cops pull over James and Louis-although Louis uses he pellet gun to disarm them and the hitmen are after Susan and Carl.

That’s not good.

Susan and Carl cut a break when the hitmen get distracted by their bickering, they are really unprofessional, Hitman Biff gets mad that Mario bought a taser, “it was on sale”, instead of using a gun and makes fun of him again. That’s the last straw. He decides to use the taser on his partner.

Biff: [Biff is slowly coming to after Mario blasted him with a taser gun] Ooohhhh… what happened?

Mario: Man, it was something. You got struck by lightning.

Biff: Really?

Mario: Freak storm.

Susan and Carl are running and Carl scared spits out that he lied and that he isn’t a doctor but a trashman, and his name is Carl, and he watched her from across the way and saw the fight. When Susan hears that he was spying she slaps him twice, but she still takes off with him as he’s a better option than the hitmen.

What the group doesn’t know is that Carl and James’ coworkers have tracked them down to play a prank on them and have cut the brake and gas line. One of them drops their cigarette so when Carl and Susan reach it, boom it explodes.

The hitmen catch up to Susan and Carl and kidnap them, taking them to Potterdam and they get sealed in containers to be dumped.

That’s not good.

James, Louis, the Pizza man, and the dead body chase after them and we have a great scene where James and Carl are hanging on the gates of a truck screaming.

So they find Susan but they still have to deal with Potterdam. They end up going through the trash and creating a little carnival of horror to freak Potterdam out and stop him. Even the pizza guy joined in. It’s hilarious.

This movie is crazy, but in a good way. It was hilarious, fun, and I loved it. After I watched it I had to show my sister and friend.

For more Emilio Estevez, go to Don’t You Forget About Me

For more spying on the neighbors, go to One Day You’ll See Something You Shouldn’t: Rear Window (1954)

For more kidnapping, go to Super Power Girl, Blackmail, Gangsters, and a Serial Kidnapper: Strong Woman Bong Soon (2017)