Flashpoint (1984)

You won't be disappointed!

Sorry, this movie sucks

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

As others have noted its a fairly old, and at the time bold little conspiracy idea. Don't watch it with a jaded eye. I saw it when it came out. It's not masterful but its clever and solid. If you are a wanna be mili film critic then it may be lost on you

Easygoing cynic Bobby Logan (an excellent and engaging performance by Kris Kristofferson) and his short-tempered idealist partner Ernie Wyatt (superbly played by Treat Williams) are a couple of Texas border patrol guards who find a jeep buried in the desert with $800,000 dollars in cash in it. However, said jeeps turns out to have a dangerous link to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.Director William Tannen relates the gripping story at a brisk pace, grounds the premise in a plausible workaday reality, makes fine use of the desolate desert locations, and ably crafts a tense paranoid atmosphere. The intelligent script by Dennis Shryack and Michael Butler not only offers an interesting array of believably complex characters and a marvelously labyrinthine narrative, but also provides a fascinating and provocative exploration on the themes of loyalty, morality, and corruption. The ace acting by the tip-top cast keeps this film humming: Rip Torn as the crusty Sheriff Wells, Kevin Conway as ramrod chief Brooks, Kurtwood Smith as slimy and duplicitous fed Carson, Tess Harper as the sweet Ellen, Jean Smart as the brash Doris, Miguel Ferror as the smarmy Roget, Roberts Blossom as scraggly hermit Amarillo, and Guy Boyd as sarcastic smartaleck Lambasino. Kristofferson and Williams display a winning natural chemistry in the leads. Kudos are also in order for Peter Moss's sharp cinematography and the moody synthesizer score by Tangerine Dream. Only the horribly cornball ending credits theme song leaves something to be desired. A real sleeper.

When Flashpoint first came out I was almost 14. When I saw it I did so mainly for Kristofferson who still to this very day remains one of my favourites. Either singing or acting . Flashpoint is a neat premise the book is better though. Kristofferson and Treat Williams play Logan and Ernie. Two border patrol agents who find that life is getting rougher by the day. Faced with the possibility of being out of work by computers or stuck behind a desk. The two pals are stuck in a rut. They'd leave by go where ? and with what money ? then Logan finds a buried jeep a skeleton with a rifle and 800 thousand dollars . Logan takes the money. covers up his tracks and tells Ernie. Ernie is careful maybe too careful. He refuses to take the money until he finds out who did it belong to and why was the driver there. they track it down. and as they get closer to the answers the federal government sends in men in black. They claim to be troubleshooters here to help the border patrol but in reality what they are is more chilling. Soon friends start dying and Ernie and Logan find out they are in way over their heads. and now they are in a race against time to get the money and run. But not before the final answer comes to them as to who the man was. and what he did for 8oo thousand dollars. It's implied he killed President Kennedy. But still the movie is fun. The acting is solid. and the movie moves along at a nice little pace. Worth seeing if you find it on DVD or on a late night movie.

I can just picture the expressions on the faces of Treat Williams and Kris Kristofferson, a pair of actors whose talents haven't always been well utilized by Hollywood, after reading this script. One can imagine them scrambling for the phone, knocking things over, frantically dialing their agent's number and blurting out "Yes! Yes! I'll do it! Are you kidding? Hell, I'll do it for free!" Films this bold and unspoiled don't come along very often these days.Blends elements of works as diverse as "A Simple Plan", "The Parallax View", "All The President's Men", "The X-Files" and even Orwell's "1984" (the motion detector plot point) to create a sublime, spine-tingling mystery. The first time director William Tannen, approaches the disturbing central theme of his piece in a startlingly original way. He circles it, surrounds it, then closes in with the cunning of a fox and the daring of an assassin. There are subtle (very subtle) hints along the way, particularly if you listen closely to steel-eyed Kurtwood Smith's jaw-dropping diatribe in which he blisters the so-called "American Way" in no uncertain terms. "This whole f***ing nation is politics" he hisses. But they are merely hints making the slyly implied, almost subliminal conclusion that much more of a stunner. Undoubtedly a film that requires its audience to pay extremely close attention to every line, every gesture, every nuance, every single frame of film. The attentive viewer will be amply rewarded.Williams and Kristofferson are weary, prankish (think Hawkeye and Honeycutt from M*A*S*H) border patrol officers waging a futile battle against the steady flow of illegal immigration from Mexico into Texas. K.K. is a laid back cynic, a decorated Vietnam veteran with an easy-going disposition that masks a simmering resentment towards lock-kneed bureaucracy. Williams is a stubborn, uneducated idealist, a hothead unafraid to speak out against the injustice, corruption and plain foolishness he encounters on his job every day. K.K. no longer has any illusions about "making a difference" but loves the feeling of riding around in his jeep through a beautiful lonely desert, and glories in the thrill of the chase. Williams clings to the slippery notion that, despite his shortcomings, he's one of the last of the good guys, that his uniform does indeed stand for something decent and noble. Their friendship and camaraderie is deep and real in a way few in movies out of Hollywood ever are.The two of them are in a state of increasing anxiety as a result of their superiors' arrogant, short-sighted decision to rely on a new motion detector technology to "assist" border patrol units in performing these difficult, high stress jobs. K.K. and Williams are convinced that this reliance will at worst render 3/4 of uniformed personnel useless and soon put them out of work, and at best will severely alter the complexion of their day to day duties. They fear it will rob them of their sense of freedom and adventure. (Williams is by no means thrilled at the prospect of sitting in a room staring at a computer screen all day.)Fed up, they are both looking for a ticket out. K.K. seems to find one in the form of a wrecked jeep buried under mounds of dirt and mud in the middle of nowhere. He unearths $800,000 in cash in the wreckage as well as the driver's skeletal remains. A look at the corpse's license reveals that, amazingly, he must have been rotting there undiscovered for at least 20 years, placing his last moments alive somewhere in the early 1960's. Wisely reasoning that if the money has gone un-missed for that long, he has as much right as anyone else to claim it, K.K. wants to split the cash with his buddy Williams and take off immediately for Mexico. Williams is tempted, as anyone in his shoes would be, but has his doubts. It doesn't pass the smell test and also won't quite square with his nagging personal code of honor.To placate Williams K.K. allows himself to be talked into doing some detective work first, to see if they're able to determine who exactly the money once belonged to, and whether or not it's clean. At a certain point in this investigation they come to the shocking realization that they're up against an evil so defiant, so entrenched that even when staring down the barrel of a loaded revolver it won't budge an inch. It all hits home in one of the most chillingly emblematic shots in the history of American film: the pair have just made a gruesome discovery inside an abandoned shack in the desert; the camera pulls back to show them staggering outside silently and dropping to their knees in horror against a backdrop of sand and sky."Flashpoint" stands besides films such as "Treasure of The Sierra Madre" and Rod Serling's "Patterns" as unflinching, uniquely American movies that reveal more about who we really are at different points in our tumultuous history than just about any other hundred films combined. It will give future generations a strong sense of what our hopes, our fears, our struggles and suspicions truly were at the time. Its clear-eyed, uncompromised vision is so atypical it's jarring. You keep expecting it to take some wrong turn down Formula Road as so many other conspiracy thrillers do, but it bravely sticks to its narrow, bumpy, unpaved path.Scoff all you want, and of course this movie has been virtually ignored by critics and audiences for going on 17 years now, but this is one of the best movies of its decade. Rip Torn's sage advice for a shell-shocked Kristofferson at the end will stick with you. "Don't be a martyr. We already got enough of those. Be different. Be the one that got away."