Long before Tom Cruise decided to patent the running on screen just to look cool thing, Kurt Russell was busting similar sprint speed marathons in many of his films. In The Mean Season, Russell really goes for it, bombing it through the streets of Miami so he can try and save his girlfriend from the clutches of a marauding copycat serial killer played by Richard Jordan. Russell was never really a major film star but he often put in some notable, overlooked performances.
The Mean Season, a pulpy Miami noir is perhaps one of his meatiest roles as an opportunistic, narcissistic journalist, who is contacted by a serial killer working his way through a spate of grisly murders. Concocting a sleazy ambience, makes for an exceedingly atmospheric work which is sadly somewhat at the expense of the mechanics of constructing an effective thriller.
The Mean Season begins with some promise, framing the media as a parasitic force but it lacks subtext, gradually taking a conventional route whereby the unmasking of the killer is not only anti-climactic but lacks the bite to make this genre piece altogether brilliant. Andy Garcia shows up as a disgruntled cop but is so much better in a similar role in later films like Internal Affairs and Jennifer Eight. Also, this film may have been a key influence on Fincher’s Zodiac (2007).
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