Robert Culp and Bill Cosby are two PIs in LA. They are hired to track a missing woman, which leads them into a miasma of organized crimes and random violence.

It's Walter Hill's first credited screenplay. As is his wont, character is indicated by action, rather than talk, with busted relationships that leaves them the only people who care about each other. Director Robert Culp directs decently, with scenes of violence alternating with boredom, with shots indicating their relationship.

Unfortunately, these alternating sequences leave long, quiet sequences which result in let-downs in pacing. It's an erratic movie. Vincent Gardenia plays the shouty cop who they interact with. James Woods appears in a small role.

"Hickey & Boggs" is a crime film with Bill Cosby and Robert Culp perfoming two private investigators looking for a missing woman in a story by the cult director / writer Walter Hill. Maybe in the 70's this movie worked but in the present days it is dated and confused. This is the only feature directed by Robert Culp. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Os Perigosos" ("The Dangerous")

Walter Hill wrote the deliciously knotty and fatalistic script for this marvelously gritty private eye mystery action thriller with the unlikely (and possibly incredible) duo of Jason Robards and Strother Martin in mind for the leads. Instead, the familiar "I Spy" team of Robert Culp and Bill Cosby wound up playing the titular rumpled, cynical, tight-lipped and terminally luckless desperate and destitute detectives for hire, a couple of rundown and weary inconsequential losers whose seemingly simple and straightforward case involving a missing rich girl ties in with a suitcase full of mucho stolen mob money and a bunch of dangerous, not to be trifled with gangsters who are willing to use any brutish means necessary to get their hot loot back.

The wonderfully easy'n'breezy chemistry between Culp and Cosby effortlessly carries the picture from start to finish. Culp's laudably crisp and assured direction scores a completely on-target bull's eye with the resolutely hard-boiled, tough-minded and no-nonsense harsh tone in particular; this is the kind of top-notch rough'n'tumble modern-day film noir affair where several innocent bystanders are unfairly killed and everyone connected with the stolen bucks ends up getting their violent just desserts by the movie's thrilling conclusion. Peppered with a splendidly sharp line in sardonic humor, punctuated by three stirring shoot-outs (the first in an empty baseball stadium, another in a parking lot, and the last one on a beach),immensely enlivened by a sensational supporting cast filled out by such always welcome folks as Rosalind Cash, Michael Moriarty, Vincent Gardenia, Ed Lauter, and James Woods, and topped off with one of those quintessentially 70's amazing downbeat defeatist climaxes, this simply super sleeper overall rates as one of the finest, most shamefully neglected and undeservedly undervalued crime features from the 70's.