Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

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Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Scott LeBrun James Woods once again lights up the screen as a cheerful, mildly sleazy prison guard, Frank "Fast-Walking" Miniver. He's sometimes got some kind of hustle going on, but he's not all that bad. Yet, he finds himself drawn into a plot being engineered to assassinate William Galliott (Robert Hooks), a black revolutionary. Ultimately, Fast-Walking has to make a choice. Accept the money being offered to participate in the killing, or accept Galliotts' offer of cash to keep him safe.Although leisurely paced, "Fast-Walking" is a frequently riveting look at corruption in a prison system. It gets a fair amount of juice from a typically electrifying performance by Woods, but even he is outshone by the late Tim McIntire, who's magnetic as an ambitious and crafty convict named Wasco. Woods also has fine scenes with the tantalizingly sexy Kay Lenz, as Wascos' girl "Moke". Moke makes it clear from the moment of her first encounter with Fast-Walking that she's not somebody to be messed with. Lenz does have one extremely memorable sequence where she turns on almost every male present in the visiting room. The rest of the supporting cast is stocked with some excellent actors and actresses: M. Emmet Walsh as Fast-Walkings' superior, Charles Weldon as his co-worker, Susan Tyrrell (looking more glamorous than usual) as Evie, Lance LeGault as Lieutenant Barnes, Sandy Ward as the warden, and Sydney Lassick as an inmate. The great screen psycho Timothy Carey has an amusing role as eccentric kingpin "Bullet"."Fast-Walking" was adapted from the novel by Ernest Brawley by producer & director James B. Harris, who produced some of Kubricks' films when he was younger and who would again work with Woods on the police drama "Cop". The story is entertaining and on location shooting at a real prison aids in the authenticity. Some viewers will be pleased with the amount of full frontal female nudity. (Be warned, however, that we also get full frontal from Mr. Walsh!)Nicely scored by Lalo Schifrin, this is a fairly interesting film worth a look for fans of prison-based cinema and actor Woods.Eight out of 10.

bux THE RAP, the book this movie was 'based' on was one of the most difficult books I've ever read. Yet I could not put it down. Raunchy, crude, foul, lewd...you name it, it had it. It also had some of the best characterizations of any novel I've ever read.Well, as for the flick...it was deplorable. I mean, Tim Mcintire as Wasco? Wasco was the baddest mutha...talking 'bout WASCO...Mcintire as Wasco is like casting Tim Conway as Charles Manson.What happened to the MAIN character in the book? Little Arv. He doesn't even exist in the movie...Fast Walking WAS NOT the main dude in the book. Why even name credit this thing with THE RAP? None of the spirit, atmosphere, nastiness, or drama of the book was captured in this movie.For me it was not only a disappointment, but a total waste of time and celluloid.

Woodyanders One of the most exquisitely trashy -- and hence best -- seriocomic crime/prison movies to ever ooze onto celluloid. James Woods, that splendidly spacey, spastic, spindly stringbean who's turned sleazily engaging pent-up intensity into something of a modern science, is very much in his usual mondo nutzoid element as Frank "Fast Walking" Miniver, a lazy, dissolute, laid-back, don't-give-a-s**t-about-nothing, weed-toking, on the take Texas jail-house guard who's got his fingers in several filthy pies: he runs dope for cunning, calculating, double-dealing control freak top con Wasco (a magnificently lordly, mesmerizing, darkly charismatic characterization by the late, great Tim McIntire), helps Susan Tyrell run a south-of-the-border brothel, and has been hired by opposing racial factions to either protect or bump off powerful black civil rights leader Robert Hooks.The bang-up supporting cast smokes in no uncertain terms: a sensationally sassy'n'sexy Key Lenz as McIntire's fiery, fetching hot tramp main squeeze, M. Emmet Walsh, who scuzzes it up with his customary rip-snorting aplomb as the crooked chief of security; and a beautifully battered Timothy Carey as a foolishly obdurate elderly felon with exclusive dibs on the behind bars drug trade (McIntire's fabulously flamboyant spiel in which he explains to Carey how he's going to claim a monopoly on all the drug trafficking and bust it wide open by catering to the individual whims of each ethnic group serving time in the pokey is a real gem), plus colorful bits by such reliable thespians as Lance LeGault (as the ramrod captain of the guard who's itching to fire Woods), K. Callan, Sandy Ward (as the ineffectual warden) and the chronically geeky Sydney Lassick. Writer/director James B. Harris never makes a single misstep, tossing in enough seedy subplots, assorted sordid antics, startling plot twists, and smack dead on the money exploitation movie ingredients (wall-to-wall nudity, sex, illicit narcotics of every kind, seething racial tension, profanity-ridden dialog, lowbrow raunchy jokes -- y'know, the whole gnarly'n'nasty nine yards) to keep this delectably decadent doozy constantly entertaining throughout. Moreover, we've got Lalo Schifrin's flavorful jump band blues score, smashingly clear-eyed cinematography by King Baggott, a uniquely twisted sense of black-as-midnight goof-ball humor, and, natch, even a pervasively cynical and nihilistic edifying moral: If you put a whole bunch of ethically lacking scumballs together under one roof they'll get worse instead of better because they can take full advantage of the opportunity to feed off one another's moral baseness like a pack of leeches. Now, how could any fervent, hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool B-movie aficionado possibly pass this baby up? Well, the answer is you just can't, because this first-rate blithely amoral treat is quite simply the authentic funky article.

tomweeks James Brawley's novel 'The Rap' was a long and beautifully written commentary on a great many things. It captured the atmosphere of its milieu (the 1960's) perfectly.Although the plot of the novel is held together by the glue of the conspiracy within the prison, the novel itself is filled with a rich cast of colorful, fully developed characters who force the reader think about all those things good novels do--life, death, love, hate, family bonds, freedom, bondage. James Woods is a fine actor, but this poor adaptation of a truly great novel was so thinly drawn that I didn't at first even recognize "Fast Walking" as having come from 'The Rap'. It's a decent little movie, but would have been better had the film makers tried to put more of Brawley's viewpoint, characters and keen observations into it. See the film first, then get a copy of 'The Rap'. If you do it the other way around as I did, you will be disappointed in the movie.