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The blueish video intermediate ("Check the replay. Slow-mo") establishes underworld Illinois, an Arkansas blaze meanwhile points up the first intimations of hellfire. Bumpkin firefighters (Bill Paxton, William Sadler) receive a map from a self-immolating religionist, precious artifacts purloined from church comprise the MacGuffin, "let's get rich." A gutted warehouse is the proper terrain for the degraded quest, a witnessed execution precipitates the collision of hicks and gangstas. The crime lord (Ice-T) has a regal moniker, fancies himself a businessman, keeps a cellphone at the ready. His trigger-happy underling (Ice Cube) harbors mutinous plans, his junkie brother (De'voreaux White) is taken hostage as the two intruders barricade themselves in a room. Chortling like a Western prospector, the old squatter (Art Evans) comments on the extended standoff: "I think I finally figured out how you boys are gonna get a chance to get outta here. Body bags!" Race war, greed screed, indoor maelstrom—Walter Hill in lean, mean form. Jackals in the crumbling factory, to them a charred Grail. "Our gold. God's gold. Fool's gold." (Bound between the warring sides, the Black vagrant bristles at the redneck's contrite offering without quite refusing it: "Forty bucks? What, ya gonna give me a mule, too?") A staccato fluidity translates the acerbity of the Robert Zemeckis-Bob Gale script into vehement action, figures caught in fierce arrangements of gnarled steel, rotting wood, showers of sparks. Survival is the stated theme, moreover "it's all about gettin' yours!" Durable loot and expiring flesh, fraternal bonds amid bullets, the prying lens punched out at last. The coda situates it all securely in the tradition of Leone and Aldrich and Cohen. With Bruce A. Young, Glenn Plummer, Stoney Jackson, T.E. Russell, Tommy Lister Jr., John Toles-Bey, Byron Minns, and Tico Wells.
--- Fernando F. Croce |