“Drifters, Dopes, and Dopers”
Hal Ashby’s 8 MILLION WAYS TO DIE is about cops and robbers, coke and hookers. (These are the pillars of new American action movies—the ones that aren’t about showing the Commies how mighty is our moral wrath.) The Ashby film is based on Lawrence Block’s mystery novels featuring the detective Matthew Scudder; the best known of these books is “Eight Million Ways to Die” —which, of course, refers to New York City, where the stories are…