Big Trouble

Director: John Cassavetes, John Cassavetes, John Cassavetes, John Cassavetes

1986 / 93min / 35mm

Cassavetes’s final film, which he was recruited to direct over original screenwriter Andrew Bergman, is a black comic riff on Double Indemnity starring Alan Arkin as a Los Angeles insurance agent who, faced with an imposing tuition bill for his triplets, is drawn into a plot hatched by knockout femme fatale Beverly D’Angelo, conspiring to bump off her ailing husband, played by Peter Falk. In hindsight, the film is a bittersweet sign-off from Cassavetes, and a reminder of the pleasures even a minor work can offer. It also, we would be remiss not to mention, features perhaps the finest spit-take in all of cinema.