Friday, November 30, 2007

Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 5: Split Second

While I never cared for Blade Runner, Rutger Hauer has been in some pretty awesome movies. I am particularly fond of The Hitcher. Eventually, Mr. Hauer's career nosedived and he pretty much did only straight-to-video movies and video game voices (with a few notable exceptions).

Right before this happened, Hauer starred in a sci-fi action movie called Split Second, that absolutely bombed in the theaters. Why did it bomb? Well, the writing was pretty cheesy (the main character's name is Harley Stone, for god's sake), the monster was a direct rip-off of Aliens, and it was a pretty mindless action flick.

So why do I love it? Mostly for Rutger Hauer's over-the-top performance as a burned out, half crazy cop, and the interactions he has with his new by-the-book geeky partner. Yes, it's one of those movies, but in this context the loose cannon/by the book combo works well, and Hauer and Neil Duncan (who went pretty much nowhere after this) have an amusing chemistry that makes the movie watchable. Plus, Pete Postlethwaite who is good no matter what you put him in, and Kim Cattrall before she looked like a well-used leather hand bag.

It's out on DVD, but Netflix doesn't seem to have it. So if you spy it at your local video store, give it a shot.

You'll want bigger guns.

-Mattbear out.

Previously on The Inexcusable:

Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 4: Laurel Canyon

Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 3: the Jason Priestley double-feature

Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 2: A Shock to the System

Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 1: Diggstown

5 comments:

Wiwille said...

Fine fine I'll put it in my queue. Okay there's over 700 movies in there. Wow, I'll get around to it in around 2017.

Mattbear said...

Heheheheh.

If you're using Netflix, then you're exaggerating. It caps at 500.

Wiwille said...

I use Blockbuster. They allow an unlimited amount in the queue.

Psyber Wolf said...

Now if they would just make more William Gibson books into movies like Neuromancer.. I think they would be able to put ole Rutger Hauer in there someplace. He was pretty good in Bladerunner, but then I love them grungy future tech, cyberpunk movies.

Mattbear said...

Gibson books unfortunately don't translate well to movies for a damn. See "New Rose Hotel" (one of the worst movies I've ever seen) and "Johnny Mnemonic" (while I have a soft spot for it, it was a crappy movie).

Neuromancer has been in production hell for over a decade, and will probably never happen. Peter Weir was going to do "Pattern Recognition", which would have kicked so much ass, but he dropped it and now it too is in production hell.