There are films that from the moment of their creation look like they are relics from a bygone age. One such example is Desperate Hours, 1990 thriller directed by Michael Cimino, a film that clearly shows that its director and the studios producing it have seen better days.
The film is based on eponymous novel by Joseph Hayes, inspired by real events that had taken place in his native Indianapolis in 1952. The novel was adapted in Broadway play and in 1955 into a William Wyler’s feature film starring Humphrey Bogart and Fredric March. Hayes also co-wrote the script for 1990 version. Its plot begins when Michael Bosworth (played by Mickey Rourke), intelligent, sociopathic and manipulative convict talks his lawyer and girlfriend Nancy Breyers (played by Kelly Lynch) into helping his escape from prison. Bosworth is soon joined by his brother Wally (played by Elias Koteas) and their half-wit associate Albert (played by David Morse) and the trio plans to hide in an empty house before Nancy helps them to continue their escape to Mexico. Bosworth selects a mansion with a sell sign unaware that its occupant Nora Cornell (played by Mimi Rogers) is at home. She is immediately taken as hostage and her ex husband Tim (played by Anthony Hopkins), 15-year old daughter May (played by Shawnee Smith) and 8-year old son Zack (played by Danny Gerard) join her. Bosworth tries to intimidate the family into submission and prevent them to alert authorities before Breyers’ arrival. In the meantime, FBI Agent Chandler (played by Lindsay Crouse) has concluded that Breyers co-operates with Bosworth and has her followed hoping that she could lead to her lover.
Home invasion thriller was something of a novelty in 1950s Hollywood, but decades later this wasn’t the case. Michael Cimino was mostly aware of the limited stage play setting of an old black-and-white film and tried to add something new. The most noticeable thing was large number of exterior shots that used lush colour cinematography by Douglas Milsome and showed great natural beauty of Utah and Colorado locations. Cimino was so apparently in love with the scenery that one of the segments near the middle of the film looked like it would have belonged to western. The other interesting element was character of tough, smart and authoritative FBI female agent, played by Lindsay Crouse using heavy and sometimes almost incomprehensible Southern accent. But those interesting additions couldn’t have compensated for rather predictable and cliched rest of the film.
The cast is solid, including Mickey Rourke in one of the first roles of villain, and same can be said for Anthony Hopkins who does his best with unoriginal character often burdened with poor dialogue. Hopkins nevertheless delivers goods, just like Mimi Rogers despite chemistry between their characters not being strong. Elias Koteas fares well as Bosworth’s loyal but well-meaning brother while Morse, who often played villains in his career, is also serviceable as Bosworth’s unintelligent and potentially dangerous confederate. The worst performance belongs to Kelly Lynch, forced to play seemingly intelligent high-powered lawyer here reduced to easily manipulated bimbo who by the end of film turns into complete train wreck. To make her humiliation worse, Cimino has her topless in couple of scenes, making Desperate Hours looking too exploitative. Fans of Breaking Bad would probably appreciate presence of Dean Norris who plays Maddox, Agent Chandler’s adversarial colleague. Music score by David Mansfield sounds too much like those made in Classic Hollywood and seems out of place in the film that is set in late 1980s and early 1990s.
Desperate Hours was in many ways doomed from the start, being produced by De Laurentiis Group and Cannon Films, two film studios that had been relatively big in 1980s only to go extinct by the time of premiere. Cimino, whose career never properly recovered from Heaven’s Gate fiasco, hasn’t fared better and Desperate Hours, which flopped at the box office and among critics, would become his penultimate (and last theatrically distributed) film.
RATING: 4/10 (++)
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