With a superb cast and a sports-comedy, heavy weight champion of a director in Michael Ritchie, Diggstown proved that with the right pieces in place, the con game genre was far from stale. James Woods gives a passionate, slick performance, as fast talking ex-con Gabriel Cane, who’s just been released from prison. Cane and his grifting partner “Fitz,” played with sloppy charm by Oliver Platt, look to run a scam on John Gillon, a cobra of a boxing promoter and businessman (played with a steely slow burn of contempt by Bruce Dern), when they claim boxer ‘Honey’ Roy Palmer – a knockout performance by Lou Gossett Jr. – can beat any 10 Diggstown men in a 24-hour period. The angle shooting gets dirtier and deadlier, the stakes get higher, and the blood on the canvas is believable – in this sweet science of a midnight sting.
“The Ritchie of old – relaxed, cheerfully rebellious, a friend to underdogs and scalawags – is all over Diggstown, which could have been made the day after The Bad News Bears without anyone being the wiser. As a rascally con-man running a high-stakes boxing hustle, James Woods joins the pantheon of Ritchie heroes like Redford in The Candidate, Matthau in The Bad News Bears, and even Chevy Chase in Fletch” – Scott Tobias, A.V. Club
“Not since Smile and Semi-Tough, both released in the mid-1970’s, has Michael Ritchie directed anything quite as entertaining as Diggstown, a funny and vulgar fable about con artists so cynical that signs of simple skepticism can be taken for religious epiphanies.” – Vincent Canby, The New York Times
On the New Beverly blog, Garret Mathany interviews character actor Kim Robillard about working on Diggstown.
