" BackgroundBull Durham (1988)is a humorous and intelligent romantic sports comedy-drama about a mediocre Carolina minor leagues baseball team - the Durham Bulls, from first-time director Ron Shelton.Smiley""s.He was involved in a dysfunctional marriage o his obsessive-compulsive, judgmental, disrespectful, perfectly bitchy wife Carolyn Burnham (Annette Bening).Cinematographer Ernest Lazlo had worked on another famous, earlier film noir,D.O.A.(1950), which prepared him for this film.In both, he used German expressionistic lighting and shadows, reminiscient ofThe Cabinet of Dr.Caligari (1920).This independent film features a cheap and sleazy, contemptible, fascistic private investigator/vigilante named Mike Hammer whose trademarks are brutish violence, the end-justifies-the-means philosophy and speed.Hannibal remembered how he was rescued by Russian troops.Hannibal returned by train to Lithuania (now a Soviet republic), and at the Soviet border at Medininka, his passport required a visa for entry.