Vince and Don are two Arkansas firemen who come into possession of what just might be a treasure map. The only problem is the gold is hidden in an abandoned building in East St Louis where some local drug-dealers have decided to ice a rival. The race is on, both for the treasure and to stay alive ...
This is a great gritty action/siege movie character piece for several reasons. The premise is terrific, the cast are allowed to go wild with their performances, there are no stupid women and Hill's direction is tense and terrific. It got pretty mauled on release by genteel white critics who found the situation ugly and the characters depressing, but they missed the point - this movie is fun. It's like an old western; the gangstas are the Indians, they use mobile phones instead of smoke signals, the abandoned building is the dangerous country outside of town, there's gold in them thar hills, the Apache warrior disagrees with his Chief, the white man can't be trusted, and so on. It's a wonderful contemporisation of a lot of old action movie themes, but with a setup and a setting that's never been done before or since. The burned-out buildings, courtesy of Jon Hutman's production design, are a fabulous labyrinth of corridors, stairwells and anterooms, like some Hellish proving-ground, which literally goes up in flames at the end. Ry Cooder's ultra-heavy slide guitar music snarls around the action, topped off with a great title song written and performed by the movie's two rap stars. The two Bills are wonderfully out of their depth as the treasure hunters, and the two Ices are equally great out-shouting each other as they squabble over what to do. I really like Ice-T's acting and I think this is my favourite of his roles (though he's also great in New Jack City and Tank Girl) - King James is shrewd, and his exasperation as he can't figure out why the firemen are there, all the while dealing with dissent amongst his hoods is finely judged. Also of note is Evans as Bradlee the down-and-out, and don't miss cult-movie favourite Lister as a wordless heavy with scary shoes. Written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (of Back To The Future fame), this is a great tough-guy action piece, made by a specialist in that genre. It's maybe not quite as good as Hill's earlier classics, and the camcorder and mobile-phones date it a little, but it's still a tremendous gut-punching movie that grabs you and doesn't let go.
This is a great gritty action/siege movie character piece for several reasons. The premise is terrific, the cast are allowed to go wild with their performances, there are no stupid women and Hill's direction is tense and terrific. It got pretty mauled on release by genteel white critics who found the situation ugly and the characters depressing, but they missed the point - this movie is fun. It's like an old western; the gangstas are the Indians, they use mobile phones instead of smoke signals, the abandoned building is the dangerous country outside of town, there's gold in them thar hills, the Apache warrior disagrees with his Chief, the white man can't be trusted, and so on. It's a wonderful contemporisation of a lot of old action movie themes, but with a setup and a setting that's never been done before or since. The burned-out buildings, courtesy of Jon Hutman's production design, are a fabulous labyrinth of corridors, stairwells and anterooms, like some Hellish proving-ground, which literally goes up in flames at the end. Ry Cooder's ultra-heavy slide guitar music snarls around the action, topped off with a great title song written and performed by the movie's two rap stars. The two Bills are wonderfully out of their depth as the treasure hunters, and the two Ices are equally great out-shouting each other as they squabble over what to do. I really like Ice-T's acting and I think this is my favourite of his roles (though he's also great in New Jack City and Tank Girl) - King James is shrewd, and his exasperation as he can't figure out why the firemen are there, all the while dealing with dissent amongst his hoods is finely judged. Also of note is Evans as Bradlee the down-and-out, and don't miss cult-movie favourite Lister as a wordless heavy with scary shoes. Written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (of Back To The Future fame), this is a great tough-guy action piece, made by a specialist in that genre. It's maybe not quite as good as Hill's earlier classics, and the camcorder and mobile-phones date it a little, but it's still a tremendous gut-punching movie that grabs you and doesn't let go.