Synopsis
In this town, the heat can kill you.
Gambling fever -- along with a brutal bookie -- leads three crooked cops into a double-dealing scheme that lands them in hot water way over their heads.
1998 Directed by Danny Cannon
Gambling fever -- along with a brutal bookie -- leads three crooked cops into a double-dealing scheme that lands them in hot water way over their heads.
Ray Liotta Anthony LaPaglia Anjelica Huston Daniel Baldwin Jeremy Piven Xander Berkeley Giancarlo Esposito Brittany Murphy Kari Wuhrer Giovanni Ribisi Tom Noonan Kathryn Joosten Royce D. Applegate Tamara Clatterbuck Al Sapienza Glenn Morshower Sandra Taylor Peter Spellos Carmen Filpi Annie Fitzgerald Gordon Jennison Noice Dig Wayne George Aguilar Frank Clem George Murdock John Henry Whitaker Yvette Cruise Vanessa Munday
Tom Rosenberg Sigurjón Sighvatsson Ted Tannebaum Michael Mendelsohn Tracie Graham-Rice Victoria Nevinny
1998轰天战警
“You ever seen this?” “You ever read that?” Yes, there’s a lot of very obvious Tarantino-lite dialogue between characters discussing movies and books, etc. but the rest of the screenplay, as far as scene to scene, is pretty darn good. It’s thrilling and always entertaining, sometimes surprising in how far some scenes rise to the level of being great. It DOES help that everybody is somebody - and those somebodies are all interesting 90s character actors. And then you have Ray Liotta being legit great and giving depth to a fully realized character. He is pretty alive and animated playing out this flawed-but-principled character in what is a classic noir scenario.
This was much, much better than I expected it to…
Sun-baked Southwestern rough 'n' tumble gamblin' tale about a quasi-Chigurh obsessed with luck. An incredible cast and onion layers of interweaving corruption and deviant scuzzlords. The ending in legit cool. Speaking of which, this movie is best represented by the scene where a freshly-wounded Ray Liotta is trying to be slick and lights a cigarette in the corner of his mouth while driving in the rain and then drops the lit cig on his pants and crashes the car. I think I'd be good in a role like this, about a reckless gambler in over his head, trying to be cool and delving further into crime except played strictly for laughs.
A Troy Duffy fantasy, a brainless neo noir, a post-Tarantino dick waving contest.
Bent coppers talk about Dostoyevsky and wax philosophical over King Kong while taking drugs and screwing each other’s wives.
Almost everyone is wasted in this insipid, uninspired, misogynistic chug-fest. Anjelica Huston, what were you thinking.
Shameless Tarantino knockoff that seemed to be coming out every month back then, but one of the better ones, I think. Ray Liotta's main character has a humanist touch that is a pleasant surprise in this genre and even time it was made. Like forgotten Tarantino knockoff Phoenix has a main character that holds up better than movies from like five years ago. Completely bizarre. Forget all that, it's a fun movie. Just turn off your brain.
Meh, this would test the attention span of even the most diligent viewer. The story is simply not interesting enough and told in even less interesting ways - corrupt cops are in serious danger of becoming a movie cliché. Ray Liotta will always have a good screen presence but he alone can't make this anything it's not.
tbh the dailymotion flipped 360p version of this i watched was only 55 minutes long so maybe something cool happened but, men be chatting
VOD. Entertaining "Bad Lieutenant" meets "Reservoir Dogs" knockoff.
I like the fact that the cops never seem to be working. They show up at the crime scene, wonder if the dead guy tried to fuck a cactus or not. Have shooting competition on another cactus. Then go back to the precinct to pull high school pranks on other cops, like pouring salt in coffee, putting soap in bathroom floor. Then lieutenant comes out of his office, yells at them to clean up the shit and goes back in his office.
Kari Wuhrer gets naked and fucks most of the cops, except Ray Liotta who instead of banging Brittany Murphy or Anjelica Huston would rather go play poker. And when he's…
July 2016 challenge - Connection to previous movie - Giovanni Ribisi
Ray Liotta is cop with a big gambling problem. In order to pay off his debts he and his team wind up making things even worse. Not a bad flick, just not all that memorable.
Surprisingly engaging from start to finish. Great cast, solid dialogues (the King Kong bit is highly quotable) and overall just a damn fine neo noir. Sure, the plot has been done a dozen times, but it's done very well here. No idea why this movie doesn't get more love.
I really wanted to like this, and I suppose in plenty of ways I did. Anthony LaPaglia was terrific in his own genre-noir-macho-misogynist-tank-top-wearing way. The in media res opening was silly and when it caught up again in the third act I appreciate how little that scene actually mattered and how little flashbacks there were. The script (complete with corrupt cops and lowlifes waxing philosophical over freshman-level novels and King Kong) actually demanded the viewer pay attention and keep tabs on people. Nothing was fed to you.
But the end result was . . . very meh. Brittany Murphy and Giovanni Ribisi were also terrific, and it was good Liotta which is infinitely better than bad Liotta. But this was bad.
Like headscratchingly bad.
But I dunno if I'll forget it.
Weird feeling during the credits song especially.
Ray Liotta has made some bad movies in his time, but he's really slumming it here. Highlights include:
- Ray Liotta playing arcade games with a stripper.
- Ray Liotta huffing and puffing with crazy eyes under a pig mask.
- Tom Noonan going in and out of a lisp faster than Elmer Fudd on a ceiling fan.
- Danny Baldwin (and his character) being an incompetent moron, surprising no one.
I have to give it up to whoever decided on the character names. Nutter, Dickerman, Mr. and Mrs. Shuster, and Chicago as a mononym. Rough day at the office.
Goes a little off the rails at the end but a pleasant surprise for me as I generally don't like tarantino copycat stuff. Not only would I watch Ray Liotta recite the phonebook but the cast around him is colorful, and the script isn't just cynical nihilism like so many other post tarantino thrillers. Really though, Ray Liotta is absolutely killer in this, and it makes me sad that he wasn't given more leading roles. His Chili Palmer would've acted circles around Travolta's had he been cast in Get Shorty.
“You ever seen this?” “You ever read that?” Yes, there’s a lot of very obvious Tarantino-lite dialogue between characters discussing movies and books, etc. but the rest of the screenplay, as far as scene to scene, is pretty darn good. It’s thrilling and always entertaining, sometimes surprising in how far some scenes rise to the level of being great. It DOES help that everybody is somebody - and those somebodies are all interesting 90s character actors. And then you have Ray Liotta being legit great and giving depth to a fully realized character. He is pretty alive and animated playing out this flawed-but-principled character in what is a classic noir scenario.
This was much, much better than I expected it to…
tbh the dailymotion flipped 360p version of this i watched was only 55 minutes long so maybe something cool happened but, men be chatting
Sun-baked Southwestern rough 'n' tumble gamblin' tale about a quasi-Chigurh obsessed with luck. An incredible cast and onion layers of interweaving corruption and deviant scuzzlords. The ending in legit cool. Speaking of which, this movie is best represented by the scene where a freshly-wounded Ray Liotta is trying to be slick and lights a cigarette in the corner of his mouth while driving in the rain and then drops the lit cig on his pants and crashes the car. I think I'd be good in a role like this, about a reckless gambler in over his head, trying to be cool and delving further into crime except played strictly for laughs.
VOD. Entertaining "Bad Lieutenant" meets "Reservoir Dogs" knockoff.
I like the fact that the cops never seem to be working. They show up at the crime scene, wonder if the dead guy tried to fuck a cactus or not. Have shooting competition on another cactus. Then go back to the precinct to pull high school pranks on other cops, like pouring salt in coffee, putting soap in bathroom floor. Then lieutenant comes out of his office, yells at them to clean up the shit and goes back in his office.
Kari Wuhrer gets naked and fucks most of the cops, except Ray Liotta who instead of banging Brittany Murphy or Anjelica Huston would rather go play poker. And when he's…
I really wanted to like this, and I suppose in plenty of ways I did. Anthony LaPaglia was terrific in his own genre-noir-macho-misogynist-tank-top-wearing way. The in media res opening was silly and when it caught up again in the third act I appreciate how little that scene actually mattered and how little flashbacks there were. The script (complete with corrupt cops and lowlifes waxing philosophical over freshman-level novels and King Kong) actually demanded the viewer pay attention and keep tabs on people. Nothing was fed to you.
But the end result was . . . very meh. Brittany Murphy and Giovanni Ribisi were also terrific, and it was good Liotta which is infinitely better than bad Liotta. But this was bad.
Like headscratchingly bad.
But I dunno if I'll forget it.
Weird feeling during the credits song especially.
Ray Liotta has made some bad movies in his time, but he's really slumming it here. Highlights include:
- Ray Liotta playing arcade games with a stripper.
- Ray Liotta huffing and puffing with crazy eyes under a pig mask.
- Tom Noonan going in and out of a lisp faster than Elmer Fudd on a ceiling fan.
- Danny Baldwin (and his character) being an incompetent moron, surprising no one.
I have to give it up to whoever decided on the character names. Nutter, Dickerman, Mr. and Mrs. Shuster, and Chicago as a mononym. Rough day at the office.
Shameless Tarantino knockoff that seemed to be coming out every month back then, but one of the better ones, I think. Ray Liotta's main character has a humanist touch that is a pleasant surprise in this genre and even time it was made. Like forgotten Tarantino knockoff Phoenix has a main character that holds up better than movies from like five years ago. Completely bizarre. Forget all that, it's a fun movie. Just turn off your brain.
A Troy Duffy fantasy, a brainless neo noir, a post-Tarantino dick waving contest.
Bent coppers talk about Dostoyevsky and wax philosophical over King Kong while taking drugs and screwing each other’s wives.
Almost everyone is wasted in this insipid, uninspired, misogynistic chug-fest. Anjelica Huston, what were you thinking.
phoneix looks and feels like a netflix production but 90s. it's a tarantino ripoff but there's at least some competency on display. the cast is pretty solid and it manages a solid pace throughout. . most of the characters come across as unlikable and cartoonish, ray liotta somehow ends up the most likable character in the movie. good but fairly unremarkable. [edit: i was high when i wrote this]
Orestes 14,620 films
A few notes:
1) Films missing are mainly hardcore porn and TV shows (Hitchcock mysteries namely). There's a number of…
Fight Professor 1,052 films
The film noir genre generally refers to mystery and crime dramas produced from the early 1940s to the late 1950s.…
mattyfastwheelz 1,352 films
Keenan Tamblyn 600 films
Found these lists (twelve total which I've compiled) a couple years back and they slowly became my bible for weird…
Tyler Jirinec-Parker 1,246 films
Films that I believe are underrated, under-seen, not talked about enough or that are nowhere near as bad as their…
Kevin Royal Johnson 3,249 films
A complete list of the films in John Grant's A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir: The Essential Reference Guide, an…
Alec Novakow 7,301 films
Using HBO guides I was able to recreate a list of most of their scheduled movies. There's a few months…
Fight Professor 97 films
Dices, cards, slot machines, roulette tables. Films that revolves around gambling.
John Frankensteiner 55 films
Anyone alive (and somewhat lucid) remembers the parade of Tarantino knockoffs that came out in the years after Pulp Fiction…
Fight Professor 46 films
Some cops just don't like to do things by the book. Instead they chose to do drugs, bang prostitutes, steal…