[Originally printed in a February 1983 issue of The Weekly—which is to say, three years before they changed the paper’s name to Seattle Weekly. The film, ultrarare for decades, has just been released on Blu-ray in the United States.]
Jeremy Irons and friends in ‘Moonlighting’Moonlighting is some kind of masterpiece. Masterpieces of any sort are always welcome, but not in the same way. Some inspire, some gladden, some leave one awestruck. Moonlighting is the kind of film that had me marveling throughout how anyone ever came up with such a great idea for a movie and, having come up with it, proceeded to realize that idea so completely, within almost comically modest means.
Four men, Poles, fly to England in December of 1981. They say they have come to buy an automobile, but what they’re really up to, under cover of their one-month visitors’ visas, is remodeling a flat that their boss has purchased in Onslow Gardens. “They say” actually means Nowak says—the only one who speaks or understands English. It is his responsibility to see the job done properly and to husband the meager living allowance to get them through the month.