Desperate Hours

Yesterday, I wrote about the late Michael Cimino and Mickey Rourke's teaming on Year Of The Dragon. Today, I thought I would look back at their final collaberation, 1990's Desperate Hours.

In this remake of the Humphrey Bogart classic, Rourke steps into Bogie's shoes to play Michael Bosworth, a sociopath who's looking at a life behind bars. With the help of his lawyer Nancy Breyers, Kelly Lynch, Michael breaks free. He teams up with his brother Wally, Elias Koteas, and their partner Alfred, David Morse, and the three decide to lay low until the get word from Nancy that the coast is clear. Michael picks a surbaban home that he thinks is vacant because of a for sale sign in the yard. But the home is still occupied by the Cornell family, so Michael makes them his hostages.

This is kind of a so so remake. Rourke is perfect for the role of Michael, but the rest of the players are a bit miscast. The usually great Anthon Hopkins, as Tim, the patriarch of the Cornell family, kind has trouble adapting an American accent. Plus the age difference between him and Mimi Rogers, who plays his wife Nora, is kind of distracting. Not as distracting as Lindsay Crouse's performance as the FBI agent on Michael's trail. She horribly overacts and has a silly accent that just doesn't work.

Supposedly Cimino didn't have final cut and the studio did a horrible hatchet job on this in the editing room. Watching it, you can tell that this had potential, but the end result leaves something to be desired.

Not a great film, but it's not a total waste.

It's available on dvd and blu ray.