(used to) write about crime fiction, film and culture at Hardboiled Wonderland.
Does not reach the low-brow highs this kind of large-cast, high-gloss, action trash did in the hands of Tony Scott or Michael Bay, but it works more consistently as an ensemble than theirs always did. Cage and Jolie are having fun, but the sexiest dynamic duo are Lindo and Olyphant while Duvall and Patton make way more of their parts than was on the page.
Pretty good little Die Hard knockoff. Couple gnarly kills, an indoor motorbike chase, good Tarzan shot and man - pre-Covid, mid-budget action movies look great with so many human beings in them.
Bring back extras in movies.
Anyway, I keep enjoying Scott Mann movies more than I think I'm going to. Good sign.
Very happy for the opportunity to revisit this one for an appearance on The Projection Booth podcast. What does stand out again is the cast. Holy cow is it stacked. Always somebody interesting to watch and appreciate especially 30 years on as both Willem DaFoe and Samuel L. Jackson have built tremendous careers.
www.projectionboothpodcast.com/2021/02/episode-505-white-sands-1992.html
It's a high-desert daylight noir that twists about perhaps too much for its own good. Curious to know how writer Daniel Pyne might have directed the…
Was Yates un-fucking-touchable for a few years there or what? Between '67 and '73 he gave us Bullitt, The Hot Rock, The Friends of Eddie Coyle and this one - inspired by the infamous 'Great Train Robbery' of '63. True, some would say he gave us one of the worst films of the '80s (Krull), but I wouldn't be counted among them. This is precisely the kind of detached, no-frills, criminal procedural that I am looking for, and am disappointed…
