Two-Minute Warning (1976)

Simply A Masterpiece

Crappy film

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

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It is quite hard to enjoy "Two Minute Warning." I felt I needed a two minute warning before I saw this film! The story of a sniper killing members of the public?? I'd like to kill the bloke who wrote this! The plot is a senseless one and poorly put together. The action doesn't begin properly until about 25 minutes before the end so we have 85 minutes worth of the football crowds roaring themselves silly at the game they are watching and a bunch of actors with little to do. Walter Pidgeon was completely wasted - he didn't have a word of dialogue and was only in a few camera shots. What on earth was the point in having him included in the first place? David Janssen (T.V's Richard Kimble) doesn't look very well in his wasted appearance. He only lived another 4 years after the release of this movie and was becoming largely forgotten. Perhaps his agent could have steered him clear of making rubbish like "Two Minute Warning." Jack Klugman (minus the dead animal on his head) was making his hit television show "Quincy M.E" at the time, so at least he had something of genuine quality to focus on. Charlton Heston only has to show off his He-Man look and you know he shall save the day! Having rather nasty violence thrown into the mixture isn't enough to compensate for a poor story. Someone associated with this film clearly thought that to include repellent details of people being wasted by a mad sniper, was enough to guarantee good box office. Well I'm sorry but that was not the case here! I couldn't have cared less once some of the crowds were being wiped out, good bloody riddance to them. The 1977 Hollywood movie of "Black Sunday" with the one and only Robert Shaw, had a very similar scene involving a football match. However, that latter film has a darn sight more going for it as well as having a good plot and suspense. "Two Minute Warning" may well satisfy your average,cheap thrill-seeker but I look for something a bit more substantial.

I'm not sure why this film is rated so low on IMDb. Maybe it's just considered hip to do so, or it's just people following the crowd.This is actually an excellent thriller! And, what makes it so good is the dispassionate way it goes about its story telling. Its characters are cool in temperament, doing their jobs carefully and surgically, lending a great deal of authenticity to the high concept: A sniper has taken position to fire on unknown patrons at a Super-Bowl-type game.This approach extends to the chilling finale, which you will have to see for yourself. It is impressive and spectacular. And, the ending is unique from a character perspective.The film is made very well, from direction to script to acting. And, the crew does very well too, including cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld, who especially mounts some awesome images in the finale. And, Charles Fox, who comes up with a chilling, dissonant theme of sorts for the sniper, and shows excellent judgment in when to provide score and when to not.This thriller is recommended for those who love taught, realistic, albeit violent, films.********* (9 Out of 10 Stars)

An all-star cast led by Charlton Heston with likes of John Cassavetes, Martin Balsam, Beau Bridges, Mitchell Ryan and Jack Klugman feature in this well directed, but thinly written semi-disaster fare that never goes beyond its one-dimensional framework. Its central focus follows that of an unknown sniper planning a massacre at a championship football game at the Los Angeles Coliseum, as the coming and going personal dramas of certain people at the game intertwine. Slow to get going and rather one-note in its dramas never being as interesting as it should have been, but it opens up when the SWAT team enters and the sniper finally let's loose for a thrilling final third. As the joy and excitement of the match transforms into confusion and anxiety, where the stadium turns into a shooting pallor. I've read some people complaining about a lack of a motivation for the killer, but really one wasn't needed and the ambiguous nature only made its frenetic climax more effective. For most part it's a waiting game preying upon the inevitable build-up, even though the authorities know about the sniper they don't want to start a panic of hysteria. So it's a scary idea, exploitatively handled and director Larry Peerce creates a large scale look giving it an intense scope. The performances are stalwart, but no one really makes much of an impression."Lets not get too nervous about it. "

What's most interesting to me about Two-Minute Warning is that it's exactly the sort of middle-of-the-road Hollywood flick that they simply will not make anymore. It isn't in the least bit arty, it's not a great script, it doesn't require method acting of its actors, nor a Ph.D. in psychology to understand. What it is, is blunt, brutal, and matter-of-fact. It's almost completely untainted with sentimentality (just a touch here and there), and it isn't trying to orchestrate your feelings as if your emotions were a violin section. It's just telling a sort of ugly but gripping story, and goes about it a step at a time. Today when you go to a movie that covers similar thematic territory, the script is almost always overwritten, and badly written. (Both, with each amplifying the other's ugliness: because scripts are so overwritten -- that is, because you so loudly hear the voice of the author over the voice of the characters -- you are all the more painfully aware of the mediocrity of that voice, and of its allegiance to bland corporate values instead of specific human ones). The studios have gotten storytelling down to such a maudlin formula that they will keep bringing new "writers" onto the project until every box on their list of heart-tugging, tear-welling, triumph-savoring emotional epiphanies is represented and over-represented in every script. The end result as a viewer is sort of the storytelling equivalent of watching a two-hour tape of, um, climax shots from porn -- you are so oversaturated with "excitement" that all you see is the ridiculous falsity of everything.So, even though Two-Minute Warning is not a great movie, even though no-one would likely get nominated for an Academy Award for writing it, it is a movie worth seeing, because it demonstrates that you can tell a story without pretense, and that a solid story, told without pretense, is far more enjoyable to sit through than a grandiose one, told with pretensions that seem to emanate from a supernaturally limitless well somewhere beneath the Earth's crust in Burbank. When I come grousing out of another horrible summer action movie, and the anti-intellectuals in the crowd sneer that "not everything has to be Bergman", I want to tell them, "no, but everything could at least be Two-Minute Warning -- is that setting the bar too high for you?" The film is entertaining, suspenseful, violent, disturbing, and it has some pretty good actors just playing rather ordinary cops that are fun to watch (John Cassavetes? Are you kidding me?). I sure wish they'd make more movies like this to fill out the schedule these days.