The Man with One Red Shoe

A remake of the 1970s French film The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe, The Man with One Red Shoe follows concert violinist Richard Drew (Tom Hanks) as he’s randomly picked out of a crowd and made the object of intensive CIA surveillance – with the character’s progressively perilous situation initially hindered and eventually helped by a fetching young agent named Maddy (Lori Singer). (It’s the contentious yet somewhat baffling rivalry between Dabney Coleman’s Cooper and Charles Durning’s Ross that initially kicks the plot into gear.) The Man with One Red Shoe is certainly watchable enough for the duration of its relatively short running time – Hanks is as affable and charming as ever here – but the movie’s less-than-cohesive storyline prevents the viewer from wholeheartedly embracing the material (ie it’s never entirely clear just why Cooper and Ross are putting Hanks’ character through these deadly shenanigans). Filmmaker Stan Dragoti, working from a script by Robert Klane, generally proves unable to infuse the proceedings with more than a stop-and-start momentum, and it’s clear that one’s mild interest dips considerably each and every time Hanks’ character is offscreen. The action-packed (yet fairly tedious) closing stretch ensures that The Man with One Red Shoe ends on a seriously underwhelming note, which ultimately confirms the movie’s place as an entirely forgettable entry within Hanks’ early filmography.

**1/2 out of ****