Cinema Cycle - Striking Distance

CINEMA CYCLE

(Cardio Workout And Reviewing Movies At The Same Time)

DATE: 05/07/2014

TITLE: Striking Distance

FORMAT: LaserDisc

TIME RIDDEN / FILM LENGTH: 1 hour 41 minutes

DISTANCE RIDDEN WHILE VIEWING: 16.2 miles

TOTAL CINEMA MILES LOGGED: 148 miles

SYNOPSIS: A rogue Pittsburgh police officer exposes corruption and tracks down a serial killer who also murdered his father.

CONCEPT IN RELATION TO THE VIEWER: Be tough, suck it up and stay true to your family and values and you will come out alright in the end.  Don’t forget to drink a lot, shoot guns and get into a lot of fights either.

PROS AND CONS: This film was more entertaining than I thought it would be.  I had no concept of what it was about except that it stars Bruce Willis.  Turns out he is a rogue cop that sets out to solve a murder mystery after alienating himself from every officer on the police force.  So much so that he ends up on river patrol duty.  Which mean he lives on a houseboat and drives a vintage 1930 Chris-Craft runabout to work every day, after sleeping late and having whiskey for breakfast.  Talk about bad ass.

The film starts with a car chase that is a homage to ‘Bullet’ and ends with a boat chase similar to Miami Vice.  In between there are murders, wrong leads, a very young Sarah Jessica Parker (before Sex and the City), Dennis Farina and Brion James (who I will always think of as Leon in Blade Runner).  

The film is entertaining in a childish sort of way.  In the initial car chase scene, there is no way that a Ford Caprice could take that much damage and still run, but it does.  You don’t see the ending coming, but when it does it is somewhat formulaic, where Bruce goes mano-y-mano with the killer and triumphs.  Along the way there are lot of great shots of the Pittsburgh waterfront.

To read an overview of this project, check out the initial post for this series.

This film is a part of my LaserDisc Collection.

Clicking on the title will take you to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) entry for this film. 

This film was viewed while exercising on my recumbent cycle.  A summary of my time spent working out on my journey through movie-land can be found on Strava.com.