The Big Fix

The Big Fix is a 1978 American political comedy thriller film directed by Jeremy Kagan and based on the novel by Roger L. Simon, who dramatized his own novel for the screen. It stars Richard Dreyfuss as private detective Moses Wine and co-stars Susan Anspach, Bonnie Bedelia, John Lithgow, and F. Murray Abraham. Plot Former student radical Moses Wine now works as a private investigator. He is contacted by Lila, an ex-girlfriend from his college days, who is working in the election campaign for Miles Hawthorne, a politician who is running to be Governor of California. Lila takes Moses to meet Hawthorne's campaign coordinator Sam Sebastian, who is concerned about a fake campaign flyer supposedly showing former Berkeley radical Howard Eppis together with Hawthorne and endorsing him. Knowing that Moses was a former contemporary of Eppis, Sam hires him to find out if Eppis is behind it. Eppis was one of a notorious group of radicals known as the California Four and has been in hiding for years. Moses sets about trying to track him down by contacting some of his old associates. He is given the name of Oscar Procari, the son of a businessman and a supporter of Eppis, who proves elusive. Meanwhile, Moses and Lila visit the printing company and trace the order for the flyers to an electronics store owned by a Korean man, Harold Pak Chung, who disappears after Moses tracks him to a casino. Moses then finds Lila murdered in her apartment. Later he meets with Sam, who seems more concerned about the publicity and the effect it will have on Hawthorne's campaign. Rather than be fired, Moses quits.