Disc Reviews

I can’t help but feel a bit hoodwinked by this film.  From the director of Friday the 13^th, we are talking the original film before Jason decided to take over the duties of slaughtering camp counselors. Yes, I’m talking the Sean S. Cunningham who also delivered us the guilty pleasure The New Kids and a little later in his career Deep Star Six.  As though to sweeten the deal and make this film all the more tempting to horror fans, Bruce Campbell even stars in the film.  Campbell at this point had been successful with the Evil Dead films, Maniac Cop, and the criminally underrated but cult classic TV series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. I thought for sure I had stumbled across a gem of a film and that I’d be excited to write about it. Sadly, within 20 minutes of watching the film, I immediately understood how this film had slipped past my radar.  Thankfully the film isn’t rotten, but it is the kind of straight-to-video or late-night film that is meant for a rare breed of cinephile, one who can ignore the cheap effects and generic plot; in other words, people not so different from myself.

Jack (Bruce Campbell) is the unfortunate inmate who is being transported to another prison in the middle of a nasty snowstorm that causes the squad car to wreck.  Jack and the officers escorting him trudge their way through the snow to reach a small airport. At the airport all the passengers are stranded, and there are no flights departing till the storm settles down and the runway is cleared.  The phone lines and radios are down, so all anyone can do is sit around and wait. Things end up going bad when one of the stranded passengers turns on one of the officers escorting Jack, which results in an altercation that leads to both the officers being killed. What makes things more interesting is that when Jack kills this suspicious stranded passenger, he discovers they are not even human, but some kind of strange alien that disappears into a pool of goo when they are killed.

Nothing like a corruption charge to damper the romance between a cop and an assistant district attorney. The Big Easy is a lighthearted look at where the line is between right and wrong in more ways than one. Dennis Quaid is Lt. Remy McSwain, a native of New Orleans, who reckons that he is an honest cop, despite his willingness go along with the kickbacks from his precinct’s “Widows and Orphans Fund.” To put it plainly, he teeters on the line between being corrupt and being good police. On the one hand, he is a capable investigator and believes in justice. However, on the other, he is aware of and takes advantage of the extra incentives, such as free meals and the occasional envelope of money for extra protection. To him, it’s just the cost of doing business and how things work. That view is challenged when he meets straitlaced and by-the-book assistant district attorney Anne Osborne, played by Ellen Barkin. Each represents everything that the other hates about the law. To him, she is uptight and has no idea how the law really works; and to her, he is nonchalant and knows nothing about the slippery slope of corruption. By all accounts, they should hate each other, and yet they are drawn to one another like magnets.

While the film embraces your basic enemies-to-lovers trope, I will say that for me it felt like a fresh take, which is saying something given that the film was made back in 1986. The aspect I found interesting was the direction it took by having Remy getting ensnared in a corruption investigation just as things were starting to heat up between the two. This was a great means of throwing a monkey wrench in their blossoming relationship and creating tension between the two characters. The tension was heightened by having Barkin’s character serve as the prosecutor, thereby elevating the emotion of their exchanges, particularly when she cross-examined him and she became openly hostile as her feelings got the better of her. I did have some concerns regarding how the two would find themselves back to one another, especially with the prospect of prison for the McSwain. Naturally, there was only one way things could go with McSwain beating the rap. But that did leave the questions of how the two would find common ground again.

In 1962, I can understand why Hell is for Heroes would be a successful film. You have Steve McQueen just getting hot after his success with The Magnificent Seven, and then you have a cast with Bobby Darin, James Coburn, and Bob Newhart making his big screen debut, not to mention that war films were still pretty popular at the time; and then you had director Don Siegel at the helm. Some films are simply a product of their time, and they simply don’t age well; then there are films that are classics and are simply timeless.  Hell is for Heroes ends up somewhere in the middle for me. It’s not a bad film; actually I think it is pretty good, but I think its legacy is more about how it manages to have so much talent together before these actors and filmmakers really hit their stride or were in their prime.

When the film opens up, we’re in 1944 France, and we’re with a group of GI’s who seem to be waiting for their last orders before they get the go-ahead to go home.  These guys have seen their share of bloodshed, and they are just eager to get home. They’re writing to their loved ones with the good news, and their spirits couldn’t be higher.  This is also where we get to meet the soldiers. Reese (McQueen) has recently been reassigned; he’ a cold and bitter man who seems to have accepted he may not escape this war alive, but he’s going to take as many Nazi soldiers down with him as he can. The film has a slow start, and I mean it is at least a good thirty minutes till we see Reese and his squad get reassigned and told they are marching up to the Siegfried Line to hold off the Nazi advance.  Once this first act is over, though, this film is pretty entertaining to the very end.

“Well, I’ve been knocked down, blown up, lied to, s$#t on, shot at; I’m not a virgin except in my heart. Nothing much surprises me anymore except what people do to each other. I’m a licensed pilot, I lectured on economics at Yale, and I can memorize the front page of the New York Times in five minutes and read it back to you in five weeks. I was national Golden Gloves Champion three years in a row, and I’m fluent in four languages. And I lie … a lot.”

This was quite the experience for me. While watching this film, I keep experiencing an intense feeling of deja vu. It was as if I’d watched the film before. Burt Reynolds stars as a chaperone who hires himself out to escort folks while gambling in Las Vegas. He is eventually approached by an old friend after being roughed up, and he becomes embroiled in a situation that is far more complex than initially thought. It sounded a lot like another film I watched a few years back. However, it still didn't dawn on me until after Reynolds' opening scene in which he gets beat up after antagonizing a dorky guy and his girlfriend. Then a light bulb goes off, and I remember the 2015 Jason Statham film Wild Card, which is actually a carbon copy of this very film.