This is the biggest WTF ever. The way I would describe it is a movie you don't want to see, that you are dragged into, and realize that is exactly who the film was made for. It starts as one thing and then it feels like they gave up and just made it up as they went. Like imagine The Naked Gun but as a serious movie.
With San Francisco locales and Laslo Kovacs lensing this all becomes an outright surreal fever dream. I am also reminded of Richard Lester films, how he thinks in comic vignettes but isn't necessarily a comic director. Like, when violence happens it's brutal, suddenly it's like Dick Tracy. The characters yell at each other start to finish but they don't hate each other, it's just how they communicate. The director is doing a madcap comedy, Kovacs is filming for an oscar, the writers are doing like a Neil Simon Dragnet, and the actors think they're making the French Connection.
People should study this movie if they get into filmmaking or screenwriting, it will change how you see movies, because every element is disparate, they're all making a different movie in their heads, but it works. You imagine them writing it off, saying they just made a flop, pointing fingers, but then it came out perfectly. It isn't doing those Pauline Kael big zeitgeist things, it is almost sending them up which is endearing. Its modest ambition may take points off compared to its class, but who cares, it is certainly a classic to me. I only take a half point off because you have two choices, give it an F or give it an A minus.
