TRESPASS
A review in the public domain
by The Phantom
(sbb@panix.com)
Walter Hill has been responsible for much of what's right -- and much of what's wrong -- with contemporary action films. He made his name with the classic late Seventies exploitation film, THE WARRIORS (the film that first got theater owners worried about more than just spilled Coke and gum stuck under the seats), then went on to direct the somewhat more complex and rewarding films THE LONG RIDERS and SOUTHERN COMFORT, finally gaining mainstream attention and widespread praise for his taut and perceptive handling of the film that made Eddie Murphy the biggest box office draw of the eighties: 48 HRS.
Since those glory days of the late seventies and early eighties, however, Hill's contribution to the world of the high quality action film have been rather substantially diluted by an unbroken string of cinematic dogs, ranging from STREETS OF FIRE, to BREWSTER'S MILLIONS, JOHNNY HANDSOME, and RED HEAT, and culminating with the toxically bad ANOTHER 48 HRS., a film that to this day haunts the Phantom's worst nightmares. Phans may be forgiven if they find that they cannot even remember these titles, let alone if they only vaguely remember seeing them on cable during what otherwise might have been sleepless nights; at this point, it's only the studio executives and theater owners who remember them all too well. (Think this past summer's box office was a tad disappointing? Consider the remarkable summer of 1990, just two years ago, which gave theater owners the choice of showing ANOTHER 48 HRS., ROBOCOP 2, or simply closing down for a few weeks to cut their losses and save on their electric bills.)
Yet Hill does have a certain flair for this genre, if only because of his ability to take a script that's somewhat sub-par and rather rough around the edges and finish it with a high visual gloss; whatever his failings as a director -- perhaps nothing worse than signing on with sure-to-be-doomed projects like ANOTHER 48 HRS. -- he is able to give whatever film he is directing the full Hollywood treatment, complete with a myriad of odd camera angles, lovingly photographed, slow-motion death scenes, and an obvious love for the genre. Certainly there have been other directors who have done worse with far better material. And while this isn't exactly lavish praise, neither is it intended to be a backhanded compliment -- in the Phantom's opinion, all Hill has to do is get back to his roots and he'll once again be able to make the kind of pictures that start riots at the multiplex.
Until then, however, we have TRESPASS, Hill's latest directorial effort. And while not a bad film by any means, neither is it the kind of film that gets people stirred up -- something for which all action/exploitation films should strive, even if they do so through the use of shape-shifting killer robots from the future rather than warring inner-city gangs. Although TRESPASS is an entirely competent undertaking, it also seems a little unfocused and fuzzy around the edges; at times it even seems a tad schizophrenic. As a result, Hill has to do all he can just to keep our attention, let alone get us as involved in the film as we were well over a decade ago when we first met up with THE WARRIORS.
The schizophrenia seems a conceptual problem more than one of execution, for it seems to the Phantom that even back at its high-concept birth, no one was quite sure how to play this film -- much of the time it's difficult to tell whether Hill and writers Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis intended TRESPASS to be a remake of John Carpenter's formative "under siege" film ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (itself a homage to Howard Hawk's classic western RIO BRAVO) or a spin-off of the quintessential black exploitation film of the nineties, NEW JACK CITY. As a result, it's a little of both and not enough of either -- it has neither the intense, gripping suspense of Carpenter's low-budget classic, nor the no-holds-barred gangster ethic of the film that once again brought riots back to our neighborhood cinemas.
The plot is so simple as to make one appreciate the nuances of BASIC INSTINCT: two Arkansas firemen (Bill Paxton and William Sadler) come across a treasure map that points the way to a stash of stolen religious artifacts in an abandoned warehouse in East St. Louis. Coincidentally, this very abandoned warehouse was chosen by Ice-T as an ideal place to kill one of his disloyal henchmen. What a coincidence! The Phantom certainly would never have expected such a thing to happen (except by purest coincidence), so you can imagine how overjoyed he was to find that he hadn't spent his $7.50 in vain. But wait! After this, more stuff happens! Now get this -- you'll never believe it: as it happens (and purely by chance) our two very white firemen bumble into the middle of the execution and get both Ice-T, Ice Cube, and all their very black cronies more than a little miffed at them -- especially after they take Ice-T's brother hostage. Thus is the stage set for great drama and tragedy, just as the Bard might have done it several hundred years ago.
Once our brave firemen (one good white guy and one bad white guy; the Phantom will let you find out for yourself how many good black guys and bad black guys there are) barricade themselves in the warehouse the film more or less starts to fall apart. The problem is that neither Paxton nor Sadler are very interesting; and neither is particularly charismatic. Yet here they are, the ostensible focus of the film, and forced to deal with the kind of situation that causes most actors to break out in a cold sweat: the terror of knowing that you must play an underwritten and somewhat bland character while all around you better and more charismatic actors distract the director and do everything they possibly can to keep the audience entertained.
Also not helping the proceedings very much is the film's strange case of BODYGUARD-itis, in which a situation with very strong and obvious racial overtones is simply ignored by the filmmakers. In the case of the interracial Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston romance this may be understandable, since drawing attention to it would be somewhat akin to exploring the differences between Wonder Bread and Miracle Whip; but in TRESPASS a potential means to get the audience up and throwing things at the screen is simply ignored, with the result that everyone in the cast seems curiously restrained most of the time, as if they'd all been given a couple of doses of Prozac before the cameras started rolling. (It seems especially odd to the Phantom -- given the subsequent casting decisions -- that Gale and Zemeckis included absolutely no racial epithets in the script; the bad guys are, after all, known for their racially charged music, and if one is going to cast the authors of "Cop Killer" and "Black Korea" in a film, one should at least go to the trouble of giving them something familiar and comforting to say every now and then. That Paxton and Sadler have no business in this film in the first place -- that they were obviously cast in order to lure more white people to the film and keep it from becoming a warmed over NEW JACK CITY clone that might earn at most half of NEW JACK CITY's box office -- is a subject that the Phantom will avoid discussing here. In any event, the lack of such in a film made in 1992 serves to do little but make it seem even more far-fetched and unrealistic than it already is -- and TRESPASS is hardly well-grounded enough to be able to shoulder the burden of also seeming like some sort of bizarre urban fairy tale in which the warehouse walls are all that separate the good white guys from the bad black guys.)
What happens once Paxton and Sadler find the loot -- and the bad guys find out about it, too -- is best left to the paltry imaginations of writers Gale and Zemeckis; suffice it to say that lots of shell casings bounce off concrete, visually quite stunning fires break out, and the all-important Hayes code is observed. There are few surprises here other than the film's running length, which for some reason is much closer to the two-hour mark than it needs to be. DIE HARD this is not. (And in this season of bloated running times, the Phantom feels bound to point out that 48 HRS. was a mere 97 minutes long, proving once again that when one has little to say, one is usually best off taking only a little time in which to say it.)
Though TRESPASS is a competent action film, it is one that is curiously insubstantial given its premise. It's a film that needed some more charisma at its core (think of how much better the film would have been had either Paxton or Sadler -- which is which the Phantom is not sure -- been replaced by Ice Cube, allowing for a powerful, head-to-head confrontation between him and Ice-T instead of the muted and unaffecting one that ultimately develops between Ice-T and both of the miscast principals), and a better focus than that for which its high-concept origins apparently allowed. Too, it might have helped to have released TRESPASS *before* either RESERVOIR DOGS or BAD LIEUTENANT, for then there wouldn't be such ample reminders of what a good director can do given a well-crafted story, a literate script, and a surfeit of good acting. Hill may not be in the same class as Tarantino (whose low-budget cult classic RESERVOIR DOGS is fast becoming the DELIVERANCE of the nineties), but he's a talented director who needs better support than Gale and Zemeckis -- both clearly out of their element here -- and the second-guessers at the studio have given him.
The only reason to see TRESPASS is because it's the only action film out this Christmas; consider, however, the number of very good independent films currently in release (including the aforementioned RESERVOIR DOGS and BAD LIEUTENANT, GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, and THE CRYING GAME among them) and whether your $7.50 would be better spent on any of these fine, well-crafted films, rather than on a by-the-numbers action film of a kind that we've all seen before -- and likely will all see again before too long.
: The Phantom : sbb@panix.com : cmcl2!panix!sbb
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews