48 Hrs.

Director Walter Hill had a terrific run of films in the late 1970s and into the early 1980s with the likes of The Driver (1978), The Warriors (1979) and Southern Comfort (1981). He acquired a reputation for making visceral, no-nonsense action movies populated by tough-talking cops and criminals. Hill continued this trend with 48 Hrs. (1982), a gritty buddy cop action comedy that provided a breakout role for comedian Eddie Murphy and launched a very successful series of movies for him during the ‘80s. Amazingly, the project survived movie studio moves and a rocky production that saw Murphy’s role re-written extensively and executives butting heads with Hill over his depiction of on-screen violence. His instincts were validated with the film’s critical and commercial success that helped kickstart a resurgence in the buddy cop genre and led to a rather lackluster sequel in 1990.

Hill starts things off in dramatic fashion with a daring road gang escape as Albert Ganz (James Remar) is freed by his partner in crime Billy Bear (Sonny Landham) and, in the process, kills two prison guards. This sequence is depicted in Hill’s trademark efficient fashion complete with crisp editing and meat and potatoes camerawork that always tell us where everyone is and what’s going on. He has always had a knack for conveying kinetic action and it is certainly on display in 48 Hrs. with some nicely staged sequences that aren’t showy, but aren’t supposed to be – that’s not Hill’s style. He definitely harkens back to classic journeymen directors like Don Siegel or contemporaries like John Flynn (Best Seller).

He then cuts to a familiar scene for any Nick Nolte fan – a tired, grumpy burn-out of a man (also see North Dallas Forty, Teachers, etc.) who embodies that famous line from Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981): “It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage.” Nolte is Jack Cates, a police detective who wakes up with a coffee mug full of booze and an argument with his long-suffering girlfriend (a lovely Annette O’Toole). “That’s a fairly crummy way to start a morning,” she tells him, to which he replies, “Maybe I got a fairly crummy day ahead.” Through their behavior and actions, Nolte and Annette O’Toole tell us more than a few things about Cates and his attitude towards life. Visually, Hill informs us of the man’s profession without explicitly spelling it out. Also, Cates drives a beat-up old convertible that mirrors his rumpled appearance. It’s refreshing to see a filmmaker that assumes the audience has a modicum of intelligence.

While providing back-up for two fellow police detectives (one of whom played by reliable character actor Jonathan Banks) on a routine call (aren’t they always?), Cates runs afoul of Ganz and Billy in a violent hotel lobby showdown that leaves his co-workers dead and his gun in the crooks’ possession. Wracked with guilt over one of them being killed with his gun, Cates makes it his personal mission to find Ganz and Billy and take them down. It turns out that they had been tracking down other members of a gang that pulled off an armed robbery a few years ago and Ganz wants to collect the loot. One of them – Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy) – is still in prison and makes a deal with Cates: if he can be temporarily released from prison he’ll help the lawman catch Ganz, but they only have 48 hours to do it.

Right from the get-go Cates makes it clear that he doesn’t like Reggie and lays out how it’s going to be: “Now, get this – we ain’t partners, we ain’t brothers and we ain’t friends. I’m puttin’ you down and keepin’ you down until Ganz is locked up or dead. And if Ganz gets away you’re going to be sorry you ever met me.” And so begins a contentious partnership that sees the two men bicker, trade insults and, at one point, even come to blows until they develop a grudging respect for one another.

Nick Nolte brings his customary intensity to the role. For example, there’s a scene where Cates “questions” one of Ganz’s gang (the always reliable David Patrick Kelly) by repeatedly slamming him into a car door in a way that looks really painful and done with what looks like genuine ferocity while a bemused Reggie cracks jokes. Nolte plays well off of Murphy with his surly cop routine bouncing off of the comedian’s wisecracking convict. They have an antagonistic relationship complete with plenty of cussing each other out and racial slurs that are particularly jarring in this day and age of political correctness. It’s not that Cates is racist per se, but that he is saying those things to be mean and keep Reggie under control as he states early on.

From his first appearance in prison singing “Roxanne” by the Police in a hilarious falsetto to how he takes control of a redneck bar, Eddie Murphy is a revelation in 48 Hrs. and it is easy to see why this film made him a star. Watch how he works the room in the aforementioned bar sequence, putting everyone in their place through sheer force of will, swagger and tons of charisma to burn as he tells one upstart patron, “I’m your worst fuckin’ nightmare. I’m a nigger with a badge and that means I got permission to kick your fuckin’ ass whenever I feel like it.” It is a testimony to Murphy’s skills as a performer that he is able to pull that scene off so convincingly. Reggie also gives as good as he gets, standing up to Cates’ bullying tactics and racial slurs, which culminates in a drop down, drag out fist fight between the two men. In a nice bit of role reversal, Reggie turns the tables on Cates late on in the film when they meet at an African American nightclub, which Hill makes a point of showing the contrast in music and atmosphere to the redneck bar earlier on. It is now Cates’ turn to feel out of place. They also get to share a moment shortly afterwards and put their differences aside for a few minutes.

James Remar is good (maybe a little too good) as the nasty Ganz, a man not above kidnapping the girlfriend of one of his ex-partners and threatening to “put holes in her you never even thought of” if he doesn’t get his money. The actor is scarily convincing and conveys a ruthless intensity that makes Ganz a legitimate threat to our heroes. Looking lean and mean, the appropriately wild-eyed Remar seems to relish his role of a sociopath that enjoys killing cops. He has a pretty simple outlook on life: if he wants something, he takes it. Someone gets in his way, he kills them. It’s a testimony to Remar’s skills as an actor that the final showdown, as cliché as it is, is such a tense affair, which Hill milks for all its worth. Throughout the film, Remar continually demonstrates what a potent threat Ganz is to our heroes in the way he carries himself and the complete disregard he has for those around him.

Producer Lawrence Gordon had an idea for crime movie set in Louisiana that involved the kidnapping of the governor’s daughter. She had dynamite strapped to her head and if the ransom wasn’t delivered in 48 hours, the bad guys planned to kill her. So, her family gets the meanest cop to rescue her and he recruits one of the most vicious criminals, who also happens to be the kidnapper’s cellmate, out of worst prison to help him.

Editor Roger Spottiswoode wanted to direct and Hill, whom he had worked with in the past, suggested he rewrite the story. Spottiswoode changed the location, removed the dynamite and made it more realistic. At the time, the project was at Columbia Pictures, but Gordon had a deal with Paramount Pictures and it moved over to them. After several more drafts, the studio asked Hill to rewrite it for Clint Eastwood. The actor wasn’t interested in playing the cop and wanted to be the criminal instead. However, he decided to make Escape from Alcatraz (1979) and lost interest in 48 Hrs.

Hill suggested Richard Pryor play the criminal. The studio didn’t agree and so Hill went off to make The Long Riders (1980) and Southern Comfort. Meanwhile, the script for 48 Hrs. languished at Paramount for years. The problem wasn’t with it, but the casting of the two lead characters. Hill got a call from Gordon and was told that Nick Nolte wanted to make the film and was he interested in directing? He agreed and tried again to cast Pryor, but was unable to. Hill then tried Gregory Hines but he wasn’t available either. The president of production Don Simpson saw Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live and studio head Michael Eisner agreed that he would be perfect to play the convict opposite Nolte.

Once they got the greenlight, Hill brought in Larry Gross to tweak the script to the personalities of Nolte and Murphy, rewriting the latter’s character up to the very last day of shooting. Murphy couldn’t get out of his commitment to Saturday Night Live and joined the production two weeks after principal photography had begun. During filming, studio executives didn’t think Murphy’s scenes were funny enough. Eisner wanted to meet with Hill about it, but Gordon refused and this prompted Eisner to threaten shutting the production down. Gordon backed down and Hill told Eisner that he was getting good stuff from the comedian. Hill butted heads with the studio again when they suggested that the first cut of the film be shown to a preview audience. Hill refused and the studio insisted until the director backed down. In addition, Hill hated the marketing campaign the studio created for the film.

48 Hrs. enjoyed mostly positive reviews from critics at the time. Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “The movie’s story is nothing to write home about. It’s pretty routine. What makes the movie special is how it’s made. Nolte and Murphy are good, and their dialogue is good, too – quirky and funny.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Mr. Nolte, as the grouch of the pair, handles the less showy role expertly, while Mr. Murphy runs away with every comic situation that comes his way.” The Chicago Reader’s Dave Kehr wrote, “Hill excels as usual with his chugging, stylized action scenes, and his use of San Francisco achieves something I’d thought impossible—it gives this most clichéd of movie locations a fresh, highly charged new look.”

The mismatched buddy cop formula has been done to death by now and so one has to remember how fresh 48 Hrs. was back in 1982. There had been all kinds of buddy cop movies in the ‘70s, but in keeping with the tone of the decade, many ended ambiguously or on a down note. Hill’s film has one foot in that decade, with its gritty violence and salty dialogue, while also anticipating the blockbuster mentality of the ‘80s with its comedic set pieces and happy ending. It is also amazing to see how much anger is directed at various characters and the intensity of it, which certainly earned the film its R rating. In our current climate a lot of the film’s edges would’ve been softened by studio notes, test screenings and the ratings board, which makes one appreciate how much Hill got away with in the final cut. After 48 Hrs. it seemed like Hollywood was practically handing out buddy cop movies to every comedian/dramatic actor combination they could dream up. Most of them pale in comparison including Another 48 Hrs. (1990), which Hill returned to direct and came across as simply a rehash of the first film.

SOURCES

McGilligan, Patrick. “Walter Hill: Last Man Standing.” Film International. June 2004.

Schwartz, Tony. “Hollywood’s Hottest Stars.” New York Magazine. July 30, 1984.

Zelazny, Jon. “Kicking Ass with Walter Hill.” The Hollywood Interview. December 8, 2012.


Further reading: check out Sean Gill's awesome review over at his blog.

The Warriors

When The Warriors came out in 1979 it was a modestly budgeted film made by an up-and-coming director named Walter Hill and featured a then-unknown cast. With its nightmarish vision of New York City, the film certainly wasn’t going to be used in any of the city’s tourism ads extolling the virtues of the metropolis. Like many films from the 1970s, New York is presented as a dirty, dangerous place filled with jaded, cynical people (see Taxi Driver and The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three). The Warriors performed decently at the box office but reports of gang-related violence at a few screenings caused the studio to panic and downplay promotional advertisements. But the film had left its mark and over the years it has quietly cultivated a loyal following thanks mainly to regular screenings on television and the occasional midnight showing at repertory theaters.

The film’s premise is pure B-movie hokum. New York City is dominated by gangs that hail from the various boroughs. One man named Cyrus (Roger Hill) dreams of uniting all of these different groups into a 60,000-strong army that will run the city and answer to no one, not the police and not organized crime. To this end, he convinces representatives from 100 gangs to gather in Van Cortlandt Park. However, much like Malcolm X before him, Cyrus’ call for revolution is shattered when he is killed by an assassin, a grinning maniac named Luther (David Patrick Kelly) from the Rogues. With their leader missing in action thanks to the ensuing chaos, Swan (Michael Beck) takes over a gang known as the Warriors. They find themselves trapped in Manhattan, framed for Cyrus’ death. They must fight their way back to their turf on Coney Island and go through several territories of other gangs out for their blood. It’s a chase movie broken up by several exciting fight scenes and commented on by a late night disc jockey (Lynne Thigpen) like a Greek chorus as she spins tunes that offer clues for what awaits the Warriors next. It is this simple yet effective set-up that makes the film work so well.

The tension between the Warriors’ stoic war chief Swan and cocky gang member Ajax (James Remar) is nicely done and gives an edgy quality to their group dynamic. Swan is the archetypal Hill protagonist: a laconic man of action and of few words, much like Ryan O’Neal’s no-nonsense wheelman in The Driver (1978) and Michael Pare’s soldier of fortune in Streets of Fire (1984). With a few notable exceptions, the Warriors are a pretty indistinguishable lot. You’ve got the inexperienced guy, the not-so smart guy, the tough guy, etc. Only Michael Beck and James Remar really stand out and it’s no surprise that they were the two actors that went on to illustrious careers, especially Remar who has had a diverse career that includes Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and Sex and the City. That being said, the actors playing the rest of the Warriors do just enough to invest you in their plight so that you care about what happens to them.

Deborah Van Valkenburgh plays Mercy, a woman the Warriors cross paths with during their run-in with the Orphans. She is tough and oozes attitude and sexual appeal. She’s one of Hill’s quintessential smart, tough-talking women, like Amy Madigan’s soldier in Streets of Fire and Annette O’Toole’s long-suffering girlfriend to Nick Nolte’s cop in 48 Hrs (1982). There’s a telling scene near the end of the film where two couples get on the subway and sit across from a tired, disheveled and bruised Swan and Mercy. They are all roughly the same age but they couldn’t be more different. The two couples have just come from a prom and are a laughing and smiling while our badass heroes look exhausted but defiant having survived a tumultuous night.

The push and pull dynamic between Swan and Ajax enhances the relentless urgency that kicks in once the Warriors are on the run, fighting their way back home. Hill is only interested in constantly propelling the narrative forward as our heroes run the gauntlet of gangs. The closer they get, the tougher the gangs are that they have to face. And they are a colorful assortment, some are rather lame, like the Orphans whose uniform consists of nothing more than a plain t-shirt and blue jeans, and some look really cool, like the Baseball Furies, a bizarre-looking gang dressed up in Yankee pinstripes and oddly-colored face-paint. You would think that they would look ridiculous but there is something about them, maybe it’s their lack of speaking, that is creepy.

Hill directs the action sequences in a clean, straight-forward style so that there is never any confusion about who’s fighting who and where. He uses editing to help convey the kinetic action in these scenes so that they’re always exciting to watch. The film’s score features ominous electronic rock music comparable to what John Carpenter was also doing at the time (see Assault on Precinct 13 and Halloween). The pulsating score matches the rhythm of the editing. The music also enhances the tough, street vibe as it chugs along much like the subway that runs through the city delivering our heroes to safety.

The genesis for The Warriors came about when producer Lawrence Gordon sent director Walter Hill the screenplay along with a copy of Sol Yurick’s novel. Hill was drawn to the “extreme narrative simplicity and stripped down quality of the script.” As written, it was a realistic take on street gangs but Hill was obsessed with comic books and wanted to divide the film into chapters and then have each chapter “come to life starting with a splash panel.” Gordon and Hill were originally planning to make a western but when the financing on the project fell through, they took The Warriors to Paramount Pictures because the studio was interested in making youth films at the time.

Gordon and Hill did extensive casting in New York City. Originally, in Yurick’s book there are no white characters but, according to the director, the studio did not want an all-black cast for “commercial reasons.” Hill had screened an independent film called Madman (1978) for Sigourney Weaver whom he ended up casting in Alien (1979). The film also featured Michael Beck as the male lead. Hill was so impressed by his performance in Madman that he cast Beck in The Warriors. In order to depict the many fights in the film realistically, Hill had stunt coordinator Craig R. Baxley put the cast through stunt school.

Hill shot the entire film in New York City with some interiors done at Astoria Studios. The shooting schedule consisted of shooting from sun down to sun up. It wasn’t the easiest shoot. For example, while shooting in the Bronx, bricks were tossed at the crew. One of the cast members remembered filming a scene on Avenue A being canceled because there was a double homicide nearby. For the big gang summit at the beginning of the film, Hill wanted real gang members in the scene and they also had off-duty police officers in the crowd so that there would be no trouble. Actual gang members wanted to challenge some of the cast members but were dealt with by production security. The production fell behind schedule and went over budget.

Originally, at the climactic Coney Island confrontation at the end of the film, David Patrick Kelly wanted to use two dead pigeons for his now famous line but Hill did not think they would work. Instead, Kelly used bottles and improvised his famous line, “Waaaaarriors, come out to plaaaaaay!” This came from a man the actor knew in downtown New York that would make fun of him.

Hill was unable to realize his comic book look due to the low budget and tight post-production schedule because of a fixed release date in order to get it out in theaters before a rival gang picture called The Wanderers (1979). It opened on February 9, 1979 without advance screenings or a decent promotional campaign. People tend to forget the notorious reputation the film had back in the day. The next weekend it was linked to accounts of vandalism and three killings – two in Southern California and one in Boston. As a result, Paramount removed ads from radio and television entirely and display ads in newspapers were reduced to the film's title, rating and participating theaters. In reaction, 200 theaters in the United States added security people to curb any potential trouble. In addition, theater owners were relieved of their contractual obligations if they did not want to show the film, and amazingly Paramount offered to pay costs for additional security and damages due to vandalism.

After things calmed down somewhat, the studio expanded the display ads to take advantage of reviews from reputable critics like The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael, who gave it a rave review. She wrote, “The Warriors is a real moviemaker’s movie: it has in visual terms the kind of impact that ’Rock Around the Clock’ did behind the titles of Blackboard Jungle. The Warriors is like visual rock.” However, the film was panned by many critics. The Washington Post’s Gary Arnold felt that, "none of Hill's dynamism will save The Warriors from impressing most neutral observers as a ghastly folly.” In his review for Newsweek, David Ansen wrote, “another problem arises when the gang members open their mouths: their banal dialogue is jarringly at odds with Hill's hyperbolic visual scheme.” Time magazine’s Frank Rich wrote, “Unfortunately, sheer visual zip is not enough to carry the film; it drags from one scuffle to the next ... But The Warriors is not lively enough to be cheap fun or thoughtful enough to be serious". Yurick expressed his disappointment in the film version and speculated that it scared some people because "it appeals to the fear of a demonic uprising by lumpen youth", and appealed to many teenagers because it "hits a series of collective fantasies.”

I’m still on the fence about the comic book panel framing device imposed by Hill for the Ultimate Director’s Cut DVD. The new tweaks to the film are obvious right from the get-go as the director narrates an opening scrawl featuring parallels to some nonsense about what we are about to see with Greek mythology. Some of the scene transitions are now done in a more overt, comic book style a la panels featuring stylized frames from the film. I understand that this was Hill’s intention all along, acting as a homage to his love of comic books as a kid but it undercuts the nightmarish vibe of The Warriors that made it so powerful in the first place. This is glaringly apparent at the end when the triumphant Warriors stand on the beach at Coney Island as Joe Walsh’s “In the City” plays and the stylized comic book panel motif ruins the poignancy of the moment.

The Warriors is set almost entirely at night and presents the city as a dark, foreboding labyrinth fraught with danger that lurks around every corner and in every alley as the Warriors not only evade the cops but also rival gangs that hold them responsible for killing Cyrus. John Carpenter would take this dystopic vision to the next logical level with Escape from New York (1981) by re-imagining the city as a walled-in prison guarded by an army. Even though Hill claims this to be a comic book-like film, it really doesn’t feel or look like one despite his recent tinkering. The gritty setting, the ominous music and the constant danger that our heroes are in doesn’t evoke a comic book vibe at all. And this is what fans of The Warriors like about it.

SOURCES

Barra, Allen. “The Warriors Fights On.” Salon. November 28, 2005.

Ducker, Eric. “New York Mythology.” Fader. October 3, 2005.