Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 1, 1993 TAG: 9212310103
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: Chris Gladden (Staff)
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
`TRESPASS' BRINGS HILL BACK TO FORM
It's satisfying to see a skilled filmmaker you admire shake off a big failure and return to form. So it is with Walter Hill and his new movie "Trespass."When it comes to action pictures, Hill is one of the smartest directors around, and he's built up an impressive body of work.
Hill stumbled badly with "Another 48 Hrs.," the sequel to "48 Hrs." The original has become the standard of hard-boiled buddy pictures, and the follow-up seemed merely an indulgent attempt to exploit its success. Hill also made some missteps when he strayed from the action formula, most notably with the clunky comedy "Brewster's Millions."
The kind of humor that best suits Hill's style is the tough, cynical dialogue that his adrenaline-intoxicated characters use.
Hill is not exactly the darling of the Merchant-Ivory set. There's nothing genteel about his movies. They're typically male-oriented stories about tough characters in violent conflict. Though Hill can set up action scenes with the grace of a ballet choreographer, he doesn't confine his movies to mindless destruction. At his best, he creates interesting tensions and alliances among people in desperate situations. Consequently, the drama can be intense.
He made his directorial debut with "Hard Times," the real street fighter movie and followed it up with "The Driver," a modern-day foray into film noir.
But he made his reputation with "The Warriors." One reviewer said this highly stylized movie about a street gang battling its way back to its home turf had a comic book plot. That probably would have been news to Xenophon, the Greek historian and military leader. Hill based the movie on Xenophon's "Anabasis."
The influences on Hill are varied and sometimes so subtle critics have missed them. The underrated "Extreme Prejudice" is an homage to Hill's old boss, Sam Peckinpah.
"Streets of Fire" has been described by Hill as a rock 'n' roll fable, but it owes more to the kind of movie made by Howard Hawks than it does to Ry Cooder's propulsive soundtrack.
One of Hill's finest pictures is "The Long Riders," a splendid western that honors all of the classical elements of the genre.
Writers Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis have concocted perfect Walter Hill material with the screenplay to "Trespass." Like Hill's "Southern Comfort," it focuses on the deadly consequences of two cultures in collision. The plot focuses on two Arkansas fire fighters who stumble across a treasure map that leads them to a deserted warehouse in East St. Louis.
There, they witness a revenge killing by a powerful crime organization. The leaders of the organization, played with powerful screen clout by rappers Ice T and Ice Cube, can't understand what two white guys are doing in their tightly held domain. But the conflicts are more about survival and avarice than race.
When gold enters the picture, greed destroys the bonds of loyalty, friendship and even the necessities of mutual survival. Here, the movie takes on the classical dimensions of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," John Huston's movie based on the novel by the mysterious B. Traven.
Like the Warriors of his break-through movie, Walter Hill has battled his way back to his home turf.