Extrême préjudice

Walter Hill and John Milius tackle the modern day Western in 'Extreme Prejudice'. A fast moving, Drugs Across the Border film that requires some attention to detail. With Nick Nolte delivering the goods as a strong, silent, second generation Texas Ranger opposite an equally powerful Powers Booth as a well connected, possibly undercover Kingpin who had grown up with Nolte... Enter a team of Black Ops GIs led by Michael Ironside and the always underrated Clancy Brown. Stir in the odd bank heist. Great Lines. Lies on top of lies. Lots of guns. William Forsythe as a totally dedicated borderline psycho. Rip Torn as Nolte's shoot from the hip Mentor. Even more guns. And a final Shoot 'Em Up to rival 'The Wild Bunch'. Put it all together, and you have a memorable, cast driven classic 'Guy Flick'!

Jack Benteen is a hard-edged Texas ranger, Cash is his boyhood friend who now lives across the border and works as a major drug smuggler bringing crime into Texas. The conflict between the two men is complicated further when a group of soldiers registered as killed in action arrive in the area and begin to involve themselves in the existing drug war.

This is a good Walter Hill film that has plenty of good old fashioned western style action. The plot seems a little strange for most of the film because you're not quite sure where it's going. At the start you assume that the main focus of the film will be the relationship between Power Booth's Cash and Nolte's Benteen, but after 15 minutes the focus shifts onto the arrival of the army unit and stays split between them and Nolte. Because you're not sure what the unit is doing in this situation it keeps your interest throughout. However this means that Boothe is sidelined for most of the film which is a shame.

Both Boothe and Nolte are good, with Nolte doing his usual tough guy stuff. However the real pleasure comes from the depth of famous faces in the supporting cast. Maria Conchita Alonso is in a thankless role as the girlfriend torn between Cash and Benteen, Rip Torn is the local sheriff while the army unit includes many now well-known faces of Michael Ironside, Clancy Brown, William Forsythe and a small role for the always recognisable Tom "Tiny" Lister Jr.

The action is good throughout despite being a little flat and without any great style. The "wild bunch" style ending is exciting if a little unlikely and is typical of Walter Hill.

Overall a good modern day western with a strong cast, good plot and good action. It's nothing out of the ordinary but it's still entertaining decades after it was made.

Extreme Prejudice moves and unfolds just a like a Swiss watch, a well oiled and violent action movie that you can tell" even though he only has a story by credit, is through and through a John Milius yarn. Walter Hills direct clear, muscular action, and a hell of a lot of fun to experience, but what I like the most is just how completely this is a modern western, and decidedly a character-based one at that. Nick Nolte has almost the same tough Grimace expression through the whole thing, but that's fine because then that gives plenty of space for Powers Boothe, Clancy Brown, Michael Ironside, Rip Torn, William Forsythe and everybody else to work there grizzly magic if that is what it can be called on the screen.

In particular Powers Boothe is a delightful antagonist, like others sweating at times like its going out of style but making it part of his menace, and at one key point snorting enough coke to make Scarface blush. As soon as you see him and Nolte together you know this is going to be whenever they reappear a great meaty "I'm gonna emotionally and probably physically kick your ass" scene.

One could say we've seen a lot of this before, matter of fact it's deep down a "I got to hold up my Man code" story, down to the love intetest (Maria Conchita, who thankfully is cast well and she gives a very good performance), and at its best feels like Son of Peckinpah, in particular with that climax. I'm at saying this movie reinvent the wheel, but the direction is always precise and exciting and the interplay and dialogue is sharp and occasionally very funny or just the right tone of humorous attitude and one-liners for this kind of mercenary, Western heights movie, and by the very end it almost feels like Milius and Hill are giving us the origin story of the modern Mexican cartel haha. It's a good one.

Also one last thing, did it feel like the climax of this movie is almost like John Milius was finally getting to do the climax of Apocalypse Now, now only if Willard and Kurtz knew and even were friends going back? Just a musing.

A stoic Nick Nolte and a charismatic Powers Boothe face off in this Peckinpah-style serving of sordid melodrama and intense bloody violence. It's a fun action-Western from director Walter Hill, a filmmaker often at his best when portraying tough male milieus. With story credit going to Fred Rexer and the colourful John Milius, it deliberately makes its way towards an exciting confrontation when bullets fly and countless squibs go off. This will mean that some viewers will be turned off, but others will enjoy the visceral quality of this material. Certainly one of the movie's prime assets is a kick ass cast of cool actors, not just Nolte and Boothe.

The two leads play former childhood friends now on opposite sides of the law, a familiar enough premise. Jack Benteen (Nolte) is a Texas Ranger and Cash Bailey (Boothe) is a big time drug dealer, and Jack wants to give Cash every chance to surrender peaceably. While this is going on, they fight over the affections of a saloon singer, Sarita (the very sexy Maria Conchita Alonso) and a team of mercenaries led by Major Paul Hackett (Michael Ironside) has their own plans that involve a bank robbery.

You know you'll have a good time when you see that Hackett's comrades are played by (among others) Clancy Brown and William Forsythe. Rip Torn makes the most of his screen time as Jack's colleague Sheriff Hank Pearson. Other familiar faces in the cast include Larry B. Scott, John Dennis Johnston, Luis Contreras, Gary Carlos Cervantes, Tommy 'Tiny' Lister, Marco Rodriguez, Mickey Jones, and a briefly seen Lin Shaye. Forsythe in particular tears up the scenery. The sun baked cinematography (by Matthew F. Leonetti), Texas and California locales, and soaring Jerry Goldsmith music are all credits to the movie.

The audience should be able to enjoy the twisty plot, the interplay between the two main characters, and the big finish. All in all, this proves to be a solid outing for Hill and his cast & crew.

Seven out of 10.

You know the movie. Drugs across the Southwest border, blasted Texan landscapes, sweaty faces, gas stations in the middle of nowhere, money exchanging hands and gone missing somewhere along the way, maybe a bank robbery. It's that distinctly American type of crime movie given character by the beautiful western setting, a modern update of sheriffs and Mexican outlaws and doublecrossing between old friends now on opposite sides of the law that goes as far back as Boetticher's films, done with a focus on high-octane no-holds-barred action cut straight from Sam Peckinpah's school of blood squibs and slow-mo gunfights.

The story isn't half-bad but Walter Hill has always been an action nut first and foremost and John Milius was never Cormac McCarthy, so you'll forgive Extreme Prejudice for not quite being No Country for Old Men. It's still a good movie, not very surprising truth be told, with some nice dialogue exchanges along the way, a crabby Rip Torn as the old sheriff mentor and Nick Nolte looking mean and badass for most of the film, and if it's let down in the acting department every now and then when some emoting is required, that's because both Michael Ironside and Powers Boothe playing the villains were never the greatest of actors.

The low 6.2 rating the movie has as of this posting tells me the movie has suffered at the hands of sleepy viewers catching it randomly on late night TV in crappy pan-and-scan versions or indifferent video club patrons renting it on VHS. A niche audience comprising of fans of action movies and 70's gritnik crime cinema, the kind of genre Walter Hill has proudly inhabited in the 70's with films like The Driver, watching a good quality widescreen copy like I saw, will have much different things to say.