Extreme Prejudice (1987)

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

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

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This modern-day western starts off as a heist thriller and carries on as such until the action moves to Mexico two-thirds of the way through. After that, it becomes like a modern variant of THE WILD BUCH, with an impressive shoot-out at the end with lots of bloody squibs and a high body count - definitely a thumbs up in my book. Up until this moment, we have good actors doing their bit, a cast to die for in terms of '80s action cinema. All of this comes together into a nice package - a violent, heavily-plotted thriller with an above average cast.Nick Nolte is the tough (what else?) sheriff, spending most of his time in shoot-outs with various drug runners - in Texas, apparently, the locals don't give a damn about shooting policemen. Powers Boothe is the drug lord with little screen time, in a fairly clichéd role; acting honours go to Michael Ironside for providing us with yet another textbook example of how to be a villain. For added might, Clancy Brown has a minor role as one of Ironside's men, and the cast is generally full of hard-asses like William Forsythe and Rip Torn. EXTREME PREJUDICE provides solid entertainment when and where it counts, with macho dialogue, toughness, and violent action throughout.

When it comes to steely eyed stares, Clint Eastwood has nothing on Nick Nolte. Except Nolte is a fine actor whose talents are largely wasted in this tiresomely Johnny-one-note performance. Powers Boothe, whose on-screen charisma is a match for Nolte's, expresses a broader range as the villain, but apparently never got the big break his talent deserves. Too bad. The movie itself goes downhill after a promising beginning. Director Walter Hill is simply unable to weave the subplots of a murky script by that avatar of violence for its own sake - John Milius - into anything like an engaging whole. The result is a fatal crash dive into gruesomely nonsensical parody of The Wild Bunch. The upshot provides a lesson for those who have the blood lust of a Peckinpah, without his cinematic stylishness or moral sensibility. In fact, the film probably works better as parody, particularly Nolte's cartoonish Texas Ranger. A waste of fine talent on third-rate bravado. Save your time.

Jack Benteen is a Texas Ranger on the Mexico border with a big drug smuggling problem by the name of Cash Bailey. A showdown is brewing, but when a mystery team of army special ops show up who also have designs on Bailey's operations, things get complex ...This is a pretty standard tough guys action thriller, but is better than most due to Hill's taut direction, a strong cast and several interesting subplots and themes. Some of these don't work - the old-pals-in-school schtick is pretty lame and Sorita is a fairly thankless character with nothing much to say - but others do; the military thriller angle gives it a nice kick, Cash is a great villain in his white suit and Panama hat, at times sympathetic but also debauched and psychotic (he has a memorable silent first scene with a scorpion) and the whole thing is a sort of modern day remake of The Wild Bunch, complete with a terrific bloodbath at the end. The music by Jerry Goldsmith and photography by Matthew F. Leonetti are both excellent and lift up the rather dour atmosphere considerably, as do the dusty El Paso locations. The cast of macho men are good; Nolte takes the standard Lee Marvin approach with no blinking and only takes his hat off when he feels safe, while Boothe is a great charismatic villain, all sweaty stubble and darting eyes. Ironside is typically no-nonsense in the lynchpin turncoat role, and I especially like Contreras as the henchman Lupo (see him also in 1941, Repo Man and several other of Hill's movies). The action throughout is interesting and very well choreographed, but for me this is a conventional film improved by good craftsmanship, as opposed to a great movie. Even a minor offering by Hill however is above average and well worth catching. Written by John Milius, Fred Rexer, Deric Washburn and Harry Kleiner.

Walter Hill's Extreme Prejudice is a larger than life piece of southern fried shoot em up pulp, that plays like a Sam Peckinpah film that's been left out in the sun too long, and has solidified into a bloody, nostalgic fossil. The characters who inhabit this sun drenched southern vista are more like weathered archetypes than actual people at first glance, but the genius of Hill is that he always subverts that initial cartoony feeling with excellent writing, pacing that demands attention, and without fail, he casts his films with character actors who give the story the painstaking, unpretentious attention it deserves. Hill has always had a way with casting, and here he composes a symphony of tough guys and gutter poetry spewing, hard boiled cowboys that leaves you feeling like a shot of whiskey marinated in a deer skin sweat lodge. Nick Nolte, just emerging from his pretty boy cocoon and into the second age of his career as a cold blooded tough guy, plays Jack Benteen, a Texas ranger attempting to rid his county of the drug pollution flooding across the Mexican border. Ironically, the front runner and kingpin of the trade is his old buddy and fellow hell raiser Cash Bailey (Powers Boothe), who has zero intention of quitting his wicked ways, even at the behest of an old friend. Boothe is an actor that the camera and mic just loves, and here he theatrically inhabits the role of Cash like a white suited scorpion with a a five o'clock shadow from hell and a voice like granite slabs making love with sandpaper. Truly a memorable villain. This drug war gone personal provides a nice 'clash of the southern American Titans' style aesthetic, as the two go head to head, with the obligatory girl of both their dreams (Maria Conchita Alonso) caught in between. Just to give the plot another shot of tequila infused adrenaline, there's a team of ex special ops mercenaries in town to pull off a mysterious heist that to this day, after at least ten views of this film, I still cannot discern what they have to do with the main plot at all. But no matter, as that sub plot gives a bunch more awesome actors a chance to flex their bulldozing tough guy chops. Michael Ironside plays their leader Paul Hackett, a snarling desert dog of a prick. Clancy Brown plays the level headed, low key bruiser. It's a youthful William Forsythe, however, who steals the show as Buck Atwater, a rowdy, rootin tootin, flippant wiseass of a merc who functions like redneck, black ops version of the joker. Rip Torn shows up as a salty county sheriff as well. All of the characters eventually get swept up in a rip roaringly violent showdown south of the border, with Nolte and Boothe's characters colliding like dusty fire and ice in an explosion of flesh shredding bullets, booze and sweat cocktails flooding the air like smog, and an old fashioned sense of Hollywood escapism, aided by Hill's commitment to not only pushing the detonator on the action, but giving the characters time to talk things out, get to know each other, and most importantly, allow us to get to know them, and actually care about their outcome, so we damn well pay attention when they get their heads blown off in a gunfight. Highly recommended.