Streets of Fire.

Review #2218: Streets of Fire.

Cast: 

Michael Paré (Tom Cody), Diane Lane (Ellen Aim), Rick Moranis (Billy Fish), Amy Madigan (McCoy), Willem Dafoe (Raven Shaddock), Deborah Van Valkenburgh (Reva Cody), Richard Lawson (Ed Price), Rick Rossovich (Officer Cooley), Bill Paxton (Clyde), Lee Ving (Greer), and Stoney Jackson (Bird) Directed by Walter Hill (#1072 - 48 Hrs, #1091 - Last Man Standing, #1139 - Supernova, #1625 - The Long Riders, #1728 - Another 48 Hrs, #2217 - The Warriors)

Review: 

Paramount Pictures really liked 48 Hrs (1982), as directed by Walter Hill. He had co-written it with Larry Gross as a production that had Lawrence Gordon as one of the key producers. So, two years later, here they all are for a film again. And so, Hill wanted to make a film that he thought would be a perfect one for his teenage self that would have things he still loved even now: "custom cars, kissing in the rain, neon, trains in the night, high-speed pursuit, rumbles, rock stars, motorcycles, jokes in tough situations, leather jackets and questions of honor". Of course, in the words of Gross, Hill wanted to do a movie that basically was his "own comic book movie", which might sound a tiny bit like the inspirations for The Warriors. Casting hiccups (i.e. wanting Tom Cruise but getting beaten to the punch) and a sudden inspiration during writing...led Gross and Hill to take the success of Flashdance (1983) as a way to make the film as basically a musical, since, well, if one "stylized movie" can get going, why not this? Did I forget that one other inspiration for the type of reality depicted for the film was John Hughes? Yes, Hill not only wanted to make a movie that was something that could be great for his teenage self as a high school flick, a comic book-type film and also a musical. The film, meant to be the first of a planned trilogy (all with Pare tapped to star, naturally)...did not work out well, filing to make back its $14.5 million budget. Gross has gone on record stating that the film did have influence when it came to ones that were (in his words) "completely saturated in...iconography", such as RoboCop and Se7en, with his theory being that those films did stylization with a balance of gore that hooked the audience in ways that were not done with Streets of Fire. In 2008, Paré and Van Valkenburgh participated in Road to Hell (as directed by Albert Pyun), a sort-of follow-up.

I wish I could love it. I really do. The film is wonderfully shot by cinematographer Andy Laszlo when it comes to that weird world of another time and place that makes for a fruitfully interesting vibe and such for 93 minutes. To me, it just comes off as a more average rendition of The Warriors (1979), complete with an even less interesting idea behind its main duo because dear god, it focuses on the wrong two! I swear, one has more fun with the cheesy retort between Pare and Madigan than the attempts of trying to make me care about him and Lane (oh look, an ex-boyfriend encountering his ex-girlfriend in a rescue operation, makes one want to slip on Casablanca). Hell, according to Madigan, when she read for the film (for the part played by Van Valkenburgh), she apparently found the nomad soldier-for-hire the more interesting one. With the charm of someone seemingly ripped out of a Howard Hawks film, she steals the show away from Pare, who plays it all too cool that really only works if one is Clint Eastwood. Lane (present in a handful of films such as Coppola's two 1983 films in The Outsiders and Rumble Fish) may have a suitable presence when it comes to singing, but I think I actually found her more interested in chemistry with her lead...in A Little Romance, five years earlier. One just has to view the film around them as if it was one of those cheesy teen films where the action matters more than if the sucker gets the girl. Of course, Dafoe wearing a leather...apron (?) is far more belonging to the vibe of goofball adventure, complete with a casually weird vibe that would make a fascinating comparison with The Loveless. There is something oddly amusing about Moranis not getting to do schtick with this role, which is staid but kinda funny. It is a lean movie of pretty simple Western values that has an axe-fight in the middle of a crowd before closing its mish-mash of vibes and a song naturally named "Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young". As a whole, it is a film that looks nice and has a few moments of good-natured fun within its fable elements of rock and roll to clash with mediocre leads and stuff that only scratches the surface of being more than just "okay" entertainment. It might be among Hill's ambitious ideas for filmmaking, which therefore makes it more than just calling it one of his average productions of his heyday. 

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

The Warriors.

Review #2217: The Warriors.

Cast: 

Michael Beck (Swan), James Remar (Ajax), Deborah Van Valkenburgh (Mercy), Marcelino Sánchez (Rembrandt), David Harris (Cochise), Tom McKitterick (Cowboy), Brian Tyler (Snow), Dorsey Wright (Cleon), Terry Michos (Vermin), David Patrick Kelly (Luther), Roger Hill (Cyrus), Edward Sewer (Masai), Lynne Thigpen (the D.J.), and Thomas G. Waites (Fox) Directed by Walter Hill (#1072 - 48 Hrs, #1091 - Last Man Standing, #1139 - Supernova, #1625 - The Long Riders, #1728 - Another 48 Hrs)

Review: 

“Our film doesn’t say everyone is supposed to be a lawyer or a doctor or something. The movie sees gangs as a defensive alignment in order to help you survive in a harsh atmosphere.”

In 1965, Sol Yurick made a crime novel that took inspiration from Xenophon’s Anabasis involving gangs and a desperate run back to Coney Island through rival turf. He had been a social investigator within New York City's welfare department for several years prior to becoming a fulltime writer. Lawrence Gordon (once a vice president within American International Pictures before starting to produce films with Dillinger in 1973) was the one to spearhead a production as a producer, even if it would be a semi-cheap film made for Paramount Pictures with a director in Walter Hill that had two films to his name with Hard Times (1975) and The Driver (1978); at the time, only Hard Times was remotely successful. Hill delivered re-writes to the original script as done by David Shaber (the actual Yurick novel was, well, a straight-to-the point book about a gang in all of the rough-and-tumble moves). The wild road of making a film on location in New York City led to a good deal of success and turmoil in filmmaking (Waites, apparently seen as a "potential next James Dean", got into arguments with Hill about the nature of the dialogue and filmmaking that saw him get suddenly get killed off, to which he demanded to not be credited for the role). The film was rushed a bit to beat the rush of a film that came out in the same year in The Wanderers, which was a Bronx coming-of-age story involving teenagers in gangs; both movies were pretty moderate hits, but only one attracted a bit of violence within screenings (which because pundits really are as dumb as you think, they linked to the film just because someone died) that saw a brief halting of advertising by Paramount. The introduction of Hill's director's cut makes reference to the Battle of Cunaxa (in tying the run of a group of people back home) to go with other additions (comic book panels) that apparently were things that Hill could not do due to the rushed time to make the film. Your milage may vary on whether the panels add anything substantial to the film. 

There is something about filming on location that really brings out the ingenuity in a director, particularly one as interesting as Walter Hill in lean and mean adventure that really could double as a Western (Hill was once quoted as saying that every one of his films was a Western, although it wasn't until one would be amused to compare this to Hill's fourth feature with 1980's The Long Riders). It is a certain kind of capsule movie that has a look one can't just replicate when it comes to grime that works so well here for a relatively breezy 92-minute runtime that goes right in for a useful kinetic journey that just has the feeling of...being in a rush. It has the coordinated energy in its arrangement of fight sequences to go with a handful of amusing moments involving appealing people (punks probably had a field day). Beck (picked after Hill watched him star in a film called "Madman") and Van Valkenburgh have that type of wavering chemistry that could only come from people that believe they can navigate the stormy waters. Sure, you can't really define these characters more than a sentence or two, but that can go for anyone here and yet they still make it worth the trip. Remar (in just his second film role) has a chaotic energy to him that commands the screen in stupefying fervor worth appreciating. Of course, Kelly (making his film debut) does well in that worthwhile type of sadistic derangement that naturally has the most enduring bit of the whole film involving "come out to play" (emphasis on that last word, dragged out). It is a movie one catches for the exhilaration and madness, all of which gets going with that buildup in the starting sequence involving a collection of gangs and a man named Cyrus (if one looks up Anabasis, that involved a large group of Greek mercenaries hired...by someone named Cyrus the Younger, which, well, ended with Cyrus dying). It isn't a film about the social problem but instead a frenzy of coordinated chaos that is broadly crude but totally the kind of movie to slip on one night and enjoy for its clear-eyed dystopian nature that just busts loose.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Another 48 Hrs.

Review #1728: Another 48 Hrs. 

Cast: 

Eddie Murphy (Reggie Hammond), Nick Nolte (Inspector Jack Cates), Brion James (Inspector Ben Kehoe), Kevin Tighe (Lieutenant Blake Wilson), Ed O'Ross (Inspector Frank Cruise), David Anthony Marshall (Willie Hickok), Andrew Divoff (Richard "Cherry" Ganz), Bernie Casey (Kirkland Smith), Brent Jennings (Tyrone Burroughs), Ted Markland (Malcolm Price), and Tisha Campbell (Amy Smith) Directed by Walter Hill (#1072 - 48 Hrs, #1091 - Last Man Standing, #1139 - Supernova, #1625 - The Long Riders)

Review: 

I'm sure you remember 48 Hrs (1982). That movie was the brainchild of one Lawrence Gordon, at least in the original idea, which somehow involved a kidnapped daughter of the Governor of Louisiana within a team-up of a mean cop and the cellmate of the kidnapper. Somehow, over the course of a decade, it evolved into what you saw on screen, with the result being that four writers were credited (Roger Spottiswoode, Walter Hill, Larry Gross, Steven E. de Souza) for a movie once described by Hill in pre-production as a "a shaggy dog story. Defiant Ones plus chuckles." While it wasn't exactly the first buddy cop movie ever made, it certainly was the one that helped to popularize the genre, and the credit for success can go to its main pair in Nolte and Murphy (making his film debut after years on Saturday Night Live), who certainly play off each other well enough in terms of tense interest that made a worthy action comedy. Despite fears from folks at Paramount Pictures to the viability of the movie (including threats that Hill would never work there again)...you already know it was a success, because who else would try to make a sequel eight years later? Well, it turns out it was Murphy who lit the match to do a sequel, as it was he (under the "name" of Fred Braughton) who wrote the initial story while later approaching Hill to do the sequel under the idea of wanting to get the spirit of the first one with "a lot of street energy and the hard edges of the original" (as quoted by Hill); it also might be a coincidence that he was near the end of his contract obligations with Paramount Pictures for films. John Fasano, Jeb Stuart, and Larry Gross were tasked with writing the screenplay. With a budget of $50 million, the movie made around three times its budget back at the box office, although it was felt to be a disappointment; Murphy and Paramount ended up not being happy with each other in regard to how each promoted the film.

Would you believe this film was a hack-job? Somehow, the original workprint was 145 minutes long, and even more strangely the original cut was 120 minutes long. Undeniably, that version might seem a bit long, but it also might seem a bit interesting...instead the film was cut again right before release to 95 minutes, apparently to make for a faster paced action comedy (Brion James was quoted as saying that most of his scenes were left on the cutting room floor). I do wonder what is more prevalent: sequels with the same star and director that end up just as good as the original or ones that prove to be a disappointment. This is one clearly on the latter side, one that hobbles all the way through in attempts at honing memories from what we saw the first time around without having the charm to back it up. Hill may be an interesting director, but this certainly is not his finest hour, unless one counts shooting a few decent action scenes a worthy distraction. Now, perhaps that is unfair, because it is the script that seems to have failed the movie most, one that is built on coincidences and clichés: outlaw bikers, guys going as "The Iceman", an Internal Affairs story that I'm sure you've heard before, and a sequence past the middle put there solely to explain what is going on. If one wanted to watch 48 Hrs again, they would simply do better just watching that movie instead of a sequel that just tries to coast on the fumes of before. Nolte and Murphy are fine here, but they seem privy to just going through the motions of what we saw from before, which involves grousing and charm under the idea of being loopier than before (of course, there's also a scene where one of them points out the clichés of a fight at a bar right before it happens, so...). The editing clearly has effected James, since one might not even remember he was in the last film too, and he only shows up from time to time before the clichés creep in; Marshall and Divoff have little to work with besides shooting and screaming, and it doesn't help matters if one has taken a guess as to who the real threat is early to go with Jennings seeming more interesting in a bemused state (i.e. one who wants to see a simple hitjob done right) with even less time. Tighe smirks through a thankless role, while Casey gets to grouse at Murphy and explain the plot at one point, so there's that. As a whole, one wonders why they even bothered to make this movie at all, since it seems more like an obligation rather than something done for fun and excitement. It is a very average movie that proves for disappointment for anyone looking for something fresh or interesting within the lines of a director and its lead stars that should know better. If one wants to see more of the same from what happened before with 48 Hrs, I guess this would work. Or, perhaps, one could just watch the first film instead. A decent duo and director do not, in the end, mean a good sequel.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

The Long Riders.

Review #1625: The Long Riders.

Cast: 

David Carradine (Cole Younger), Keith Carradine (Jim Younger), Robert Carradine (Bob Younger), James Keach (Jesse James), Stacy Keach (Frank James), Dennis Quaid (Ed Miller), Randy Quaid (Clell Miller), James Whitmore Jr (Mr. Rixley), Kevin Brophy (John Younger), Harry Carey Jr (George Arthur), Christopher Guest (Charlie Ford, Nicholas Guest (Robert Ford), Shelby Leverington (Annie Ralston), Felice Orlandi (Mr. Reddick), and Pamela Reed (Belle Starr) Directed by Walter Hill (#1072 - 48 Hrs, #1091 - Last Man Standing, #1139 - Supernova)

Review: 

"I'd been dying to do a Western for years. I just like 'em. There's a kind of an idyllic quality that surrounds the shooting of them, it seems like a more fundamental film process, more to me what movies are about than clearing crowds off a city street."

The legend of outlaws has spanned a variety of media for over a century, and it is the intrigue of seeing the Old West and all the storytellers that can come from it that make it an interesting curiosity. Whether it is the ballad, or the dimestore novel, or the Western, there always seems to be an interesting idea waiting at the barrel for someone to make seem fresh. There had been various perspectives on the James legend, with one of the more recent films done before this one being The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972), so it would only make sense for yet another adaptation of the James legend (of which there were at least fifteen prior to 1980), albeit with a twist - brothers playing brothers. The idea for the film came about after James and Stacy Keach had starred in a production on television together nine years prior, in which they had played the Wright brothers. James had the idea to play Jesse, while Stacy came up with financing as producer and financer for the play that James wrote. It was briefly staged in New Jersey and Off-Broadway, but they eventually decided to make it into a film for each of them to be involved, and they enlisted the help of Bill Bryden and Steven Phillip Smith to develop the screenplay (the Keaches would also serve as producer alongside Tim Zinnermann). Enlisting the Carradines came in the form of J.Keach approaching Robert Carradine during their time in the production of the TV film The Hatfields and the McCoys in 1974 about being involved with the film, and they soon approached David and Keith with the prospect of doing it, which they eventually agreed. The Quaids came after that, but finding the fourth group came after a bit of turnover, as the Bridges brothers (Jeff and Beau) could not do the film due to schedule conflicts, and it later fell to the Guests (incidentally, the Bottoms family of Joseph, Timothy, and Sam wanted to star as the Youngers). Interestingly enough, a Carradine had already been involved in an adaptation about the legend of Jesse James and Robert Ford, as the eldest Carradine in John (who had four of his sons become actors) had played the latter subject in two films with Jesse James (1939) and The Return of Frank James (1940). That particular film was noted by Walter Hill as the best film made about the Younger-James brothers in terms of character truth, even if the historical accuracy was low.

United Artists agreed to help produce the film if they found a suitable director. Walter Hill certainly fit the mold of a man wanting to tell a good story. The Long Beach native grew up with an interest in film from a young age, although he once thought of being a comic book illustrator before he went into writing and eventually directing in order to tell his own stories. He has described his films as "rather retro", with his genre films generally trying to capture a serious framework within action that take inspiration from Sam Peckinpah among others - after all, he had worked with the director with The Getaway (1972); the clearest influence seems to be The Wild Bunch (1969), particularly with its use of slow motion for certain sequences of violence. Most (but not all) of his films can be argued to have elements of the Western genre, since Hill has noted his liking of complexity with a foundation on simple stories (Hill has argued they are essentially Old Testament morality tales), and this is the fourth feature film that Hill directed. It is a pretty good effort, one that does well with trying to capture a mosaic of the time and landscape that came with folks in the Old West that happen to engage in moral choices involving robbery and murder. In other words, it isn't just a straight action Western, nor one that gives focus to any one individual, instead being just a balanced film with a midwestern feel that makes its 99 minutes count with usefulness. There have been adaptations of the James story since this film (most notably with The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), but this film still stands for itself after four decades because of its capable charm, although it wasn't a big hit with audiences upon release (Keach has maintained that the film made a profit, although United Artists was likely thinking about the other Western they released that year that nearly sunk the studio - Heaven's Gate), making just a bit under double its $9 million budget.

When it comes to the first group of brothers, one can say that David proves the best in relative interest, as he is the most adept in charisma without having to strain for it. This seems most apparent during a sequence involving Reed and a new love interest, which naturally ends in a knife fight with a rope for them to chew on and duel. Keith and Robert do fine with a little less time to show, although the sequence with the Pinkertons and an unfortune cousin is a good one. The Keaches do well in their balance of laconic steel (mostly with J.Keach), one that doesn't aim for straight sympathy for the James brothers but instead lets them paint the picture for one to judge - their scene on horseback jumping through the window is likely the best image and moment from the film. The Quaids have a reserved amount of time on screen (most likely due to cutting from the studio), but they do well with being members of chaos (chained or not) that don't fall into the background, mostly with Randy. The Guests lurk right where they need to be in terms of calm sniveling, while Reed and Whitmore Jr fill out the edges in terms of allure and lingering authority that make for a off-kilter balance of a film, revisionist in its approach without seeming like a film relying just on a gimmick. It hits with a worthy punch in its look upon the landscape and the outlaws that became names to remember, no matter the efforts of authority like the Pinkertons or even the firing of a barrel to stop it. While it may not be Hill's best effort, it serves as an interesting start to a productive decade of work that packaged plenty of thrills within some of the confines that made the Western what it was without being chained to it exclusively, and it is a curiosity worth looking into today.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Supernova (2000).

Review #1139: Supernova.

Cast: 
James Spader (Nick Vanzant), Angela Bassett (Dr. Kaela Evers), Robert Forster (A.J. Marley), Lou Diamond Phillips (Yerzy Penalosa), Peter Facinelli (Karl Larson), Robin Tunney (Danika Lund), Wilson Cruz (Benjamin Sotomejor), Eddy Rice Jr (Flyboy), Knox Grantham White (Troy Larson), and Vanessa Marshall (Sweetie) Directed by Thomas Lee (Walter Hill (#1072 - 48 Hrs and #1091 - Last Man Standing), Jack Sholder (#476 - A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge) and Francis Ford Coppola (#592 - Dementia 13))

Review: 
Surprise, it's a late-night second review to begin October! Welcome to Spooktober. This month will have numerous reviews of things related in some way to horror, and I hope to write and post ten reviews before the month ends on the 31st. This film, of which belongs to the sci-fi/horror genre, has a bit of an...interesting history that helps give context to the final released product. The review of the film itself begins in the second paragraph.

The idea for the film originally was developed by William Malone as "Dead Star'', which involved a space expedition finding alien artifacts and brings them back to Earth with consequences, and it was first pitched to studios in 1990 as "Dead Calm in outer space". Painter and noted set designer H. R. Giger was asked to make some concept sketches to help promote the film. Gradually the story (done by Malone and Daniel Chuba with screenplay by David C. Wilson) changed to one about a medical ship answering a distress signal that finds a vessel near a black hole and rescues the only survivor of the ship who is carrying a mysterious object with him. Geoffrey Wright (director of films such as Romper Stomper) was originally hired as director for production, which was set to begin in April 1998. However, he left just prior to production beginning, having creative differences with the producers. Hill was brought in with only a few weeks to spare before the start of filming, and he wanted to make changes to the script, but his vision was different from what the studio had wanted. The budget was apparently cut in half during production, with the final budget for the film (a USA-Switzerland co-production) being around $90 million. The effects were done by Digital Domain, but with less effects than planned. MGM had a partnership with them that would provide effects for the film below usual rates for effects, but the partnership fell through, meaning it would cost more to put it, resulting in the effects-work being cut in half. Upon completing principal photography a few months later, Hill assembled his cut of the film, but without all the effects added into it, due to them not all being finished. When MGM wanted to show his cut without the effects to test audiences, Hill was opposed, stating that the film would not have good reception without the effects added in, which proved correct. Further arguments led to his departure from the film. Shoulder was enlisted to do re-edits and re-shoots to try and salvage the film. His version streamlined things a bit more, and although the results were a bit better in screenings, the results weren't up to what the studio wanted, and they shelved the film until 1999. Coppola, a board member for MGM and famed director of such films like The Godfather trilogy, was enlisted to help try and give the film another set of editing, most notably by adding a romance scene between Spader and Bassett's characters - by re-editing out-takes from a romance scene involving two other people and digitally editing their features and skin color. In any case, this is a movie that couldn't even have a decently cut trailer for its January release, utilizing deleted, extended, or alternate footage not seen in the film.

Knowing the details of a production as troubled as this one was doesn't make the film any more palatable to sit through, but it at least gives some sort of context for why this is such a sloppy movie. Whether as science fiction or horror, it manages to be a complete failure, having little to none of the standards needed to succeed on any level, being neither scary nor interesting to look at. They managed to make a film that feels like it was created from the scraps of other films and their ideas, with Alien (1979) being one I can think about off the top of my head. At least that film didn't have some magic MacGuffin with a bunch of science mumbo-jumbo to go with it, including one bit about the orb being "nine-dimensional" - but that is just one of several things to pick at with this film. The characters in this dreck are all fairly stale and not too particularly interesting to go along with, with the actors only being able to drag these paper people they play as far as they can. Spader and Bassett come out of it with the least lost, and while they can't save the film, they are at least watchable in some way, presenting some sort of charm - even if they don't have too much chemistry with each other. Forster clearly suffered in terms of screen-time from the edits, since he's in the film for not even twenty minutes, so there isn't much for him (or for the viewer) to grab onto. Phillips does okay with not being too one-note for a character such as this. Facinelli plays the villain of this sorry film, and he can't quite make this character come off as anything other than mildly annoying. I especially like the fact that the climax was re-edited in order to take out a big effects sequence involving his character changing form because the studio "couldn't see the actor" - yep, because that was the only issue. Tunney doesn't do much to generate interest with her character, which also can apply to the other people in this limited cast.

By the time the film wants to start a body count, there isn't really many people that it can use to even make a body count, and the people that it does take out are pretty much taken out in a span of about ten minutes. The look of the film certainly doesn't help make this fun, since a good chunk of the film has some sort of shade of blue dominate the screen, which can make the effects (which already feel like a cut-scene) seem a bit murky. By the time the movie throws its shamble of a climax at the audience, you will be left wondering how they managed to pass such a weird junky product in only 90 minutes, complete with a laughable reveal. On the whole, this is a laughable misfire of a movie that is best left to the dumpsters of obscurity for horror and sci-fi fans, worth only for the cheapest thrill of seeing how such a dumb product can possibly be made.

Overall, I give it 4 out of 10 stars.

Last Man Standing (1996).

Review #1091: Last Man Standing.

Cast: 
Bruce Willis (John Smith), Bruce Dern (Sheriff Ed Galt), William Sanderson (Joe Monday), Christopher Walken (Hickey), David Patrick Kelly (Doyle), Karina Lombard (Felina), Ned Eisenberg (Fredo Strozzi), Michael Imperioli (Giorgio Carmonte), R. D. Call (Jack McCool), Alexandra Powers (Lucy Kolinski), Ken Jenkins (Capt. Tom Pickett), and Ted Markland (Deputy Bob) Directed by Walter Hill (#1072 - 48 Hrs)

Review: 
The film is a remake of Yojimbo (1961), directed by Akira Kurosawa, with the screenplay done by Ryūzō Kikushima and Kurosawa. It featured Toshiro Mifune as a rōnin (a samurai with no master) that arrived in a town with competing crime lords vying for supremacy that was set in 1860 in Japan. An unofficial and unlicensed remake followed in 1964 with Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, but Last Man Standing is an official remake that gives Kukushima and Kurosawa credit for the story, with Hill providing the screenplay. With all of that information, how does this movie manage to be a dreary failure? It certainly is consistent with its tone of dry entertainment, in that it has its share of brutal action sequences and a look from Lloyd Ahern II that will certainly test the eyes of how many times the color orange dominates the screens - for better or worse. Even comparing its style to the film noirs that it seems to emulate goes against the movie's favor, since it isn't as alluring as those. It isn't so much that this is a boring thing to watch, it's just that it is a disappointing thing to see play out, with one-note characters and an execution that likes to throw its situations all over the place but not have them be readily interesting. Willis delivers a performance that seems to match the film in that it shifts between mild grinning and stale wanderer type. He may seem best when doing action sequences, but he doesn't seem to feel too comfortable in making this character seem less than stale. Dern is fairly decent, although he doesn't have too much time on screen. It is nice to see Walken when he's on screen, but there is something about the character (whether due to him or the writing) that doesn't really make him as menacing as you'd probably expect, which makes the final showdown seem less interesting than it probably should've been. The other cast members come and go with their performances, for better or worse. That's not to say that the movie would've been better if it had comedy bits, but there is certainly something lacking in terms of excitement, where one can't really revel in its attempts at trying to be compelling. In its 101 minute run-time, this isn't a terribly long slog to go through, but even as a bad film it isn't fun to pick at, more of a thing to just look at and ponder in its mundane nature.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

48 Hrs.

Review #1072: 48 Hrs.

Cast: 
Nick Nolte (Jack Cates), Eddie Murphy (Reggie Hammond), James Remar (Albert Ganz), David Patrick Kelly (Luther), Sonny Landham (Billy Bear), Brion James (Ben Kehoe), Annette O'Toole (Elaine Marshall), and Frank McRae (Captain Haden) Directed by Walter Hill.

Review: 
Admittedly, the buddy cop genre is not something that came out of thin air for entertainment. Pairing two people together with differing personalities to work together has been done numerous times over the past few decades, whether involving cops paired with each other in some sort of mismatch (such as the Lethal Weapon series or the Rush Hour trilogy), or even parodying the genre (such as in Last Action Hero). In any case, 48 Hrs is considered one of the films that formed a blueprint for the genre that manages to succeed due to its chemistry between its main two leads, Nolte and Murphy. Whenever they are on-screen together, they just click together in their raw quirky nature, contentious but compelling to watch. Nolte sells his rough and cynical character well, a grouch that isn't grating as it could've been. This was the screen debut for Murphy, who had been starring on Saturday Night Live since 1980, and he manages to do a great job, selling this confident and clever role with the right sense of conviction and timing (interestingly, he was nominated for a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year in a Motion Picture, although he lost to Ben Kingsley in Gandhi). They are a fun duo to watch mess around with each other, with my particular favorite being the scene in a bar in which Murphy intimidates the rowdy customers in order to get some useful information, mostly because of how amusing he plays his hand to the patrons. Remar is a decent villain, fairly slimy and not too much of an evil cliche, and Landham makes for an adequate second-fiddle. The other members of the cast aren't too involved with the plot much, but they are at least decent sidepieces for the film. The action sequences are neatly done, riveting in their execution and satisfactory for ones looking for excitement. The plot isn't anything revolutionary, but the film goes at an energetic pace that makes for quality entertainment that never really drags itself out at a brisk length of 96 minutes that will click at the right moments (such as with its action and main duo) to make it all worth it.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.