Quick Change is a 1990 crime comedy film directed by Bill Murray and Howard Franklin (in their directorial debuts) and written by Franklin. The film stars Murray, Geena Davis, Randy Quaid, and Jason Robards. Quick Change follows three people on an elaborate bank robbery and their subsequent escape. The film was based on the novel of the same name written by Jay Cronley who also wrote the novel "Funny Farm" which was also adapted into the film of the same name. Coincidentally, the novel was also adapted years prier as the French-Canadian film, Hold-Up which followed the exact same plot.
Plot[]
Grimm, dressed as a clown, robs a bank in midtown Manhattan. He sets up an ingenious hostage situation strapping fake dynamite all over his waist and successfully gets away with $1 million and his accomplices: girlfriend Phyllis and best friend Loomis. The heist itself is comparatively straightforward and easy, but the getaway turns into a nightmare. The relatively simple act of getting to the airport to catch a flight out of the country is complicated by the fact that fate, luck and all of New York City appears to be conspiring against their escape. To begin with, the trio is seeking the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to get to the airport, but the signs were removed during construction work, resulting in the three robbers becoming lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood in Brooklyn. Then, a conman/thief robs the trio of everything they have (except the bank money, which they have taped under their clothes). After changing into new clothes at Phyllis' apartment, they are confronted and nearly gunned down by the paranoid and stressed-out incoming tenant. At the same time, a fire has broken out across the street and the fire department arrives and pushes their car away from a hydrant only to cause it to roll downhill and then down an embankment. When the three crooks eventually manage to flag down a cab, the foreign driver is hopelessly non-fluent in English. This causes a hysterical Loomis to jump out of the moving cab to grab another, but he runs into a newsstand, knocking himself unconscious. The driver leaves, thinking he has killed Loomis. An anal-retentive bus driver, a run-in with mobsters and Phyllis' increasing desperation to tell Grimm the news that she is pregnant with his child add further complications. All the while, Rotzinger, a world-weary but relentless chief of the New York City Police Department, is doggedly attempting to nab the fleeing trio. A meeting on board an airliner at the airport occurs between the robbers and the chief, who gets the added prize of having a major crime boss dropped in his lap with their assistance. Unfortunately the chief only realizes who they were after their plane has taken off.
Cast[]
- Bill Murray as Grimm
- Geena Davis as Phyllis Potter
- Randy Quaid as Loomis
- Jason Robards as Chief Rotzinger
- Phillip Bosco as the bus driver
- Bob Elliot as the bank guard
- Phil Hartman as Hal Edison
- Tony Shalhoub as the cab driver
- Victor Argo as Skelton
- Stanley Tucci as Johnny
- Gary Howard Klar as Mario
- Kathryn Grody as Mrs. Edison
- Richard Joseph Paul as Lt. Jameson
- Jamey Sheridan as the mugger
- Kurtwood Smith as Vince Lombino \ "Russ Crane"