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This film arrived during what some might refer to as Bruce Willis' darker days. After the one-two punch of the `Die Hard' movies, he then found himself in troubled projects like `Hudson Hawk,' `Last Boy Scout' and `Bonfire of the Vanities.' (To give him credit, he did sneak in an almost unrecognizable comic performance in the otherwise unremarkable `Death Becomes Her.') A year after `Striking Distance,' Willis would hit his nadir with the silly `Color of Night' and `North,' the latter of which would provide Roger Ebert with one of his most hysterically negative reactions ever to a film (`I HATED THIS MOVIE! HATED HATED HATED EVERY MINUTE OF IT!'). How fortunate that Quentin Tarantino (`Pulp Fiction') and Terry Gilliam (`12 Monkeys') got to Willis when they did; he could have been written off as the Tom Selleck of the '90s with too many more disasters.`Striking Distance,' released in autumn of 1993, seems typical of the mid-period Willis pictures. It's gratuitously violent, profane and filled with hackneyed dialogue, underwritten female roles, plot holes and a shoebox full of cop movie clichés. Willis' hardcore fans were kept happy (though not mainstream audiences, as the movie died a quick box office death); his growing ranks of detractors had more reasons to hate him. The movie, from most accounts, was best left forgotten.Watching it today, nearly seven years after its release, it's impressive how well `Striking Distance' holds up to repeat viewings. The action sequences - including a powerful chase sequence through downtown Pittsburgh that ranks among the best car chases in the 1990s - are slick and tightly edited. No computer-generated silliness here: This is meat-and-potatoes action filmmaking that, in this day of MTV editing and arty camera shots, seems to be of a dying breed. And check out the load of actors who signed on. Sarah Jessica Parker's rookie female cop is a cliché, sure, but she plays off Willis' harshness well. The rest of the cast is a collection of character actors that any director would kill for: Brion James, John Mahoney, Tom Sizemore and Dennis Farina.Willis himself is nothing special - he's basically playing John McClane with a bad hangover - but he's not afraid to let his cop look foolish, even stupid at times. It's certainly a more interesting performance than his recent sleepwalking in `Armageddon' and `The Sixth Sense.'It's sad that so many of today's MTV-bred filmmakers don't know how to make these kinds of low-budget genre pictures; they're too busy shooting scenes with color filters or aping Orson Welles when they should be learning about rhythm, choreography and atmosphere from the likes of Howard Hawks, John Frankenheimer and John Carpenter. `Striking Distance,' along with the best genre film of the 1990s, 1997's `Breakdown,' is a fond reminder of the old-school approach to action.
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