This uncomplicated hot garbage from solid genre filmmaker Peter Hyams who often gets overlooked in the oeuvre of competent Hollywood mainstream cinema plays more like an updating than a remake of Fleischer’s original 1950s noir. Hyams is careful not to stretch this out, steering clear of letting it become a two hour overcooked melodrama, which it clearly could have morphed into. The premise is paper thin and overly conventional; an incorruptible, hard ass DA has to protect a witness from getting murdered by the mob on a train. However, what ensues for roughly ninety minutes is a hypnotically enjoyable cat and mouse thriller in which Gene Hackman foils the efforts of two sinister hitmen who roam the train carriages in cowboy boots with semi-automatics.
The weak link is the presence of Anne Archer who was pretty rubbish in most of the things she starred in and the zero on screen chemistry with Hackman. None of that really matters though considering Hyams, also on camera duty, succeeds in creating a sense of real time action, along with the idea of a narrative deadline taken to its natural extremes while dispensing with dialogue in large parts of the film. In some respects, where the film falters is when the script is allowed to speak, reiterating a litany of clichés. Moreover, the final sequence in the courtroom seems unnecessary, tacked on simply to let Hackman’s earlier gag regarding the ‘tightening of shirt collars’ come to fruition with a ridiculous visual confirmation. A diligent, underrated exercise in the economy of genre.
Movie Mahal 