videorama-759-859391
I love adventure shootout films, but ones like this, that have tight story plotting and are continually tense, are a fare few. I've seen this film a few times, and frankly this is one of those that I'd never get sick of watching. But we have good performances to boot too, even with such a small part played in the starting of our piece, by J.T. Walsh who was such a dependable and really great character actor, it pains me to think that this guy has been dead for many years. Just think what he'd be like, if was still alive and doing movies. Unfortunately like in real life here, he double crosses some bad people, mob guys, and pays for it, where blind date (Archer, looking real fine here) witnesses his execution. When D.A Hackman (solid as always) tracks her down, unfortunately so do the bad guys, where nearly the rest of the movie is set on a train, with Hackman and Archer, trying to allude two hit men, led by James B Sikking in a wonderful and menacing performance, the film's best, where here is where the real tension and suspense comes, in some really smart, "What would you do scenario's"? Very smart on the writer's part here, as he really doesn't have much to work with, situation wise, where wonderful plotting was applied here, with some real close calls on Hackman's part. The tall lady stranger, provided a twist near the end, where she didn't fit right in the story, and shared the same fate as Horror's demise in Speed, by having not what you would say, "tunnel vision". The standout scene is of course the long cross conversation one, between our two nemesis's. It's the one I love, and it always says with me, reminding me of the one in Heat, a more friendlier conversation between DeNiro and Pacino. There are some beautiful exterior night train shots, among nice fade in, fade outs. The film is directed by Peter Hyams, who takes on interesting films, 87's buddy cop movie, Running Scared, a film I loved. Here again, he's delivered a winner, and that's not just in the courtroom. The film's title beautifully mirrors Hackman and Archer's survival tactics, not just train wise. Solid drama actioner all the way through. Enjoy. Harris Yulin as the kingpin mob guy, Hackman, has a hard on for busting, gives a brief, but fine performance too.
Martin Bradley
Richard Fleischer's "The Narrow Margin" was a great little B-Movie and a classic suspense picture. Peter Hyams' remake is hardly in the same class but it's no disgrace either. It's glossier and done on an altogether larger scale and it makes superb use of some spectacular Canadian scenery. This time it's Anne Archer who is the witness to a killing and Gene Hackman is the Deputy District Attorney trying to keep her alive so she can testify against Mafia boss Harris Yulin. It keeps its train board setting and Hyams builds suspense very nicely in this reasonably claustrophobic locale. Those fine character actors J.T. and M Emmett Walsh are also on hand though they are dispatched much too early for my liking. Not a classic, then, but very enjoyable nevertheless.
Lee-Anne Phillips
This film was almost constantly annoying. The main character, supposedly an ex-Marine, manages to get his hands on actual guns several times, which might well have evened up the odds a little in his attempts to escape the assassins sent to kill his charge, so of course the screenwriter inserted bits of business each time to let the "hero" screw it up. He loses one gun whilst he stops to preen himself in a mirror, t'other whilst he tosses off a quip evidently meant to display the screenwriter's facility with Bondish repartee, and is so stuck on himself that he fails to notice when the obvious decoy on the train makes goo-goo eyes at him, ignoring countless real hunks in the process, and so sets up the mandatory denouement in which the decoy (quelle surprise!) acts out the perfect "villain taunting the hero" scene and is vanquished mid-taunt, whilst Bond... pardon... one or another of the Marx Brothers, utters the perfect quip, which in real life would have allowed the decoy to escape and kill both witness and the main character, but of course it doesn't, since the screenwriter couldn't let that happen, so it didn't, but only through brute force, wrestling a happy ending out of a bloody mash-up.I don't mind a little suspension of disbelief, but I prefer honest slapstick to whatever the heck this was.
Spikeopath
Director and writer Peter Hyams took the bold decision to reimage one of the best film noir crime pictures of the 1950s, and all things considered it's not half bad. Without getting close to the greatness of Richard Fleischer's 1952 claustrophobic suspenser that is.Having Gene Hackman and Anne Archer heading up your two principal characters is a good foundation. As the district attorney employee and witness to a mob killing respectively, both actors come up trumps for their director as they are thrust into a game of cat and mouse aboard a speeding train. As the Canadian wilderness outside the train's windows soothes the eyes, the cramped interiors make for good suspense as Hackman plays the calm to Archer's panic.There's nothing new here in terms of thriller conventions, and the pitfalls and familiarity of the plot's ideas keep it from hitting better heights: people still do dumb things – important details are all too quickly swept aside – laws of gravity non existent and etc. But refreshingly Hyams resists the chance to insert a cloying romance, while his staging of suspense scenes are very well handled. But of course he's got Hackman being as cool as a cucumber... 6.5/10
