Search - Striking Distance [Blu-ray] on Blu-ray

Underrated Genre Gem

James J. Caterino | 09/23/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Bruce Willis at the peak of his action hero form playing a cynical hard-boiled cop trying to fight the system. A pre-Sex and the City Sarah Jessica Parker at the peak of her cuteness. Great character actors like Dennis Farina, Tom Sizemore, Brion James, Tom Mahoney, and Andre Braugher. Superb on location cinematography shot by Mac Ahlberg in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a cool genre score by Brad Fiedel (love that saxaphone love theme) and on the mark (and wonderfully over the top) direction by Rowdy Herington of Road House fame. Striking Distance is a nice little hard boiled action gem that seems to be slowly gaining a nice little cult following. For fans of 80's and 90's action films, this is a movie worth seeking out."

HUH?

Michael Butts | Martinsburg, WV USA | 04/07/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I was really surprised by the number of negative reviews of this movie. Granted, STRIKING DISTANCE, is not one of Bruce's best films, but I found it to be solidly entertaining, cliches and all. And I think it had some very good twists that I didn't see coming. I found the whole cast, (even (...)Sarah Jessica Parker) to be commendable in their roles. Special kudos to Robert Pastorelli, Dennis Farina and Tom Sizemore. I wanted to be entertained and STRIKING DISTANCE certainly filled the bill for me!!"

Bruce vs. the wretched serial killer

Ratspit | California, United States | 07/05/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Bruce Willis would not be the first actor to bag on their own work. Some people might take the fact that an actor bags on their own work as a very authoritative statement and not bother seeing such a film. If the actor doesn't like their own film, why should anyone else bother? But I think such need not always be the case, and this movie is one good example. And artist is always critical of their own work, and rightly so. But just because they see things they don't like about their own work or something else about a film they are in, does not mean that others will certainly see the same things for the same reasons.

After seeing a trailer for this movie on a dvd I have, I came upon an IMDB post about a Bob Costas' TV interview (I've never seen it myself) and Bruce Willis saying he knew this movie was crap when he was making it, and that this experience made him decide to choose projects based on the projects merits and avoid Hollywood tripe. For this and other reasons, I did not bother to pursue getting the movie at the time. Recently, I came across this movie in a Wal-Mart $5 discount bin and being a Bruce Willis fan I grabbed it. After watching it, I find it easy to say that even though I don't care much for movies involving serial killers, this was a decent enough flick that would have been worth it had I paid $10 instead. It could be defined as typical Hollywood tripe, especially if you're an actor who's been in the business for years and are looking to expand your horizons. But not all tripe is truly tripe. Bruce did a decent enough job going up against the killer, and the movie was not just tired and boring and by the numbers. It looks and sounds good, has good production values and cinematography, is fairly suspenseful and entertaining. In the big picture it's probably fairly typical of this type of movie, but if you want to see Bruce Willis go through the paces in the taking down the serial killer routine, it's a decent and interesting take on it all and without a lot of in your face gore or anything.

Incidentally, I and plenty of others think that Hudson Hawk rocks! Some people just don't get it I suppose."

Enjoyable But Lazy

Only-A-Child | 07/18/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"There are two mysteries to "Striking Distance" (1993) which drive this movie and provide the character motivation; as things build toward a climax (and only ten minutes remain to wrap everything up) you know that two has to be one-that the same thing will be the answer to both questions because not enough time remains to untangle two "different" sets of misdirection.

Of course first-time viewers applying first-class logical reasoning skills will never guess the answer, because someone (presumably the writers) cheats at the end and introduces the deus ex machina device. Dating back to Greek tragedy, deus ex machina is when an artificial character is suddenly introduced to untangle a hopelessly contrived plot. Looking back for clues to the involvement of this character you realize that there are none and that the writers have intentionally kept the audience ignorant, a cheap way to surprise the viewer, the drawback being that the technique makes it impossible to inject even the tiniest bit of suspense into the viewing process. What clues there are were inserted just to jerk the viewer around.

They cheat again with another of those stupid villain resurrection fight sequences at the very end. You know this tired stuff, show evidence that the villain could not possibly have escaped then have him Jason-like magically surface alive and kicking. The sad part being that it doesn't work (which must have been obvious during the editing process), it is totally unnecessary, and it could have been seamlessly trimmed out during post-production. Lose those moronic 20 seconds and you could add about 10 IQ points to the target audience.

That said, it is otherwise an entertaining film. Bruce Willis plays a trouble-making Pittsburgh cop named Hardy and.... big surprise.... he's unpopular with the department brass. He is demoted and paired with Sarah Jessica Parker patrolling the three rivers for the River Rescue Squad. Their romance is predictable but the chemistry is good and the relationship has a nice low-key charm. The river patrol provides an opportunity to stage some nice 1940's style action and chase scenes. Hardy is very easy to identify with so you can get a nice vicarious rush from his point-of-view.

Hardy is unpopular because he testified against his first partner in a police brutality case, because he insists that a serial killer is still at large, and that only someone on the force could be the serial killer. So mystery #1 is the identity of the serial killer. Mystery #2 is who killed Hardy's father (a police Captain) about the same time as the first round of serial killings. . His uncle (Dennis Farina) is on the force, and at one time so were two of his uncle's sons, Hardy's cousins and childhood friends. Not much is revealed about them because doing so would require a much more intelligent screenplay. One seems to be a violent nut case so you know he could not possibly be involved in the killings.

Roger Ebert summed it all up nicely in a template: "A rebel cop stirs up trouble and is disciplined, but determines to stay on the trail of a serial killer, while meanwhile he is assigned a partner that first he hates and then he likes, while the killer cleverly tries to frame him. Add several chase scenes and a deadly confrontation in which all of the key characters magically congregate at the same time."

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child."