Pánico en el estadio

A determined sniper is discovered by a TV crew in a scoreboard tower at a football game and how will police deal with the situation. The placement of S.W.A.T. sharpshooters on the light towers to take out the gunman would be the logical response since sneaking up on the guy might provoke him to shoot into the crowd.

I find this film to be a bit slow as stock characters are introduced and placed at the game. Once the sniper takes his position and becomes a threat, this film turns exciting, gritty and violent as shots are exchanged.

The fact that the shooter is faceless adds to the scariness of the situation. Who is this guy and what is his major malfunction?

The recent events in the Washington D.C. area add an air of reality to the movie. Previously no one would have believed that people were capable of such an ugly crime.

"Two-Minute Warning", aside from the formula melodrama, is a creepy thriller that might be a little too real now.

A lone gunman has his sights set on a sell-out crowd at a championship football game. Captain Peter Holly leads the desperate fight to try and stop the maniac from picking people off at will. Perched high on top of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the gunman has his pick of the targets, the Mayor -the President - or merely the innocent? Either way he has to be stopped before all hell breaks loose.

Much like "Rollercoaster" a year later, Two-Minute Warning is wrongly lumped in with the disaster movie genre that flooded the 1970s, and just like Rollercoaster, Two-Minute Warning is an excellently taut thriller. The build up is paced to precision, all characters are introduced to us to give us something to associate with should things go very wrong. As this is happening we get little POV snippets of our killer, accompanied by Charles Fox's harshly impacting music, the killer is never seen but we feel the dread, the impending sense of murder is a constant presence.

Once we are at the game and the authorities are aware that a sniper is on the roof, the film shifts up a gear and lays on the suspense thick and heavy. Captain Holly (Charlton Heston in authoritative scene commanding form) is joined by the SWAT team, led by the cool and serious Sgt. Chris Button (John Cassavetes), whilst stadium security manager Sam McKeever (Martin Balsam) prays that disaster can be averted. Then the final third of the picture is a ripper of heart pounding stuff, a final third that rewards the viewers patience for having invested in the film and the key characters. Filling out the cast is Gena Rowlands, Jack Klugman (brilliant interplay with Mitch Ryan's priest), Beau Bridges, Walter Pidgeon and David Jansen.

Two-Minute Warning is a quality thriller that is sadly undervalued on the big IMDb site, go on, give it a go and you might just be pleasantly surprised. 7.5/10

Footnote: I should point out that my thoughts are on the original unedited cut of this film, I have never seen the watered down TV cut and have no plans to ever do so.have never seen the watered down TV cut and have no plans to ever do so.

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. "

"Two-Minute Warning" is a good, enjoyable thriller made in the style of the popular "disaster film" cycle of the 1970's, with a large cast of familiar faces, playing characters with their own little stories. Many of them, however, take a back seat to the action in this story (based on a novel by George LaFountaine) about a sniper spotted above the scoreboard in L.A. Coliseum during a championship football game. The cops can't be sure of who this person is targeting, and have to figure out how best to approach the situation. It's only towards the end, in the last half hour, when the action really gets cranked up, the stakes are raised, and things get pretty violent. One nice element of mystery is that we never get that good a look at this sniper (Warren Miller); we learn his name at the end but little else about him (although one of the characters believes that information will come out soon enough). People can take issue with the inefficient security at this place, or the fact that the cops are most often not too effective here, but the movie is basically decently made entertainment, with a very good music score by Charles Fox. Some of the actors get a good showcase: Charlton Heston as take-charge police captain Peter Holly, John Cassavetes as S.W.A.T. team commander Sgt. Button, Martin Balsam as stadium security head Sam McKeever, Beau Bridges as family man Mike Ramsay, Jack Klugman as shameless gambler Sandman, and David Janssen & Gena Rowlands as argumentative couple Steve & Janet. Other familiar faces and prominent character players in the cast include Brock Peters, David Groh, Mitch Ryan, real-life football star Joe Kapp, Robert Ginty, Tom Bower, Carmen Argenziano, Michael Gregory, and Harry Northup. Unfortunately, the great Walter Pidgeon is wasted as an elderly pickpocket. Filmmaker Andy Sidaris ("Stacey", "Malibu Express", etc.) plays the TV director, and TV personality Merv Griffin sings the national anthem! A sufficient amount of tension and excitement is created, the aerial photography is very good, and the visceral quality of the movie is undeniable; things get effectively bloody before the movie ends. There's even a touch of grim irony to the proceedings. The climactic action is both gripping and frightening, showing how bad things can get when a lot of people are in a panic. Overall, this movie is a decent diversion, if not terribly substantial, and keeps from ever getting boring. Seven out of 10.

The Seventies was the decade of the disaster film, but oddly enough Charlton Heston has never been credit for being King of the genre. We know Heston for his work in big budget spectacles like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, but he's probably appeared in more disaster films than any other player.

Think about it, Heston during the seventies starred in Earthquake, Grey Lady Down, Skyjacked, Airport 75 and this film Two Minute Warning. All of them with a cast of well known players put in harm's way of a terrible act.

In this case it's some psycho freak with a rifle with telescopic sight who decides he's going to take out a whole load of people at a championship football game at the Los Angeles Coliseum. As in all disaster films the guessing is as to who among the cast will survive until the end of the movie.

We're not sure what the freak's motivation is, we do know that as the film opens for target practice he shoots down one of a pair of bicyclers driving past his motel. On some level I really don't care. The time for societal soul searching stops when the bullets begin to fire. After that it's only one thing, get him.

Charlton Heston is the police captain at the precinct where the Coliseum is located and John Cassavetes is the SWAT commander assigned to kill or capture. By the way it is also shown earlier Cassavetes SWAT team actually taking a suspect alive, so it's not that they are just looking for an opportunity to use the weapons.

Among the crowd at the football game there are some performances I especially liked, one of them being Beau Bridges as a young father out with his family for the game who spots the sniper and tries to warn the already informed police. Also Mitchell Ryan and Jack Klugman have some nice scenes as a priest who happens to be sitting next to a gambling addict who literally has his life riding on the point spread.

Two Minute Warning is not the best or worst of the Seventies disaster films. The cast is competent enough, a bunch of real professionals without a sour note among them.

Terror is real, an evil unto itself without reason and Two Minute Warning dramatically drives that point home.