Customer Reviews

Striking Distance (Widescreen/Full Screen)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

It is no wonder that this movie takes place in Pittsburgh,Pa.where corrupt cops abound.Bruce Willis is excellent in this one.

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!!

Striking Distance may boast the likes of mega star Bruce Willis and Sarah Jessica Parker, pre her Sex In The City fame, in its cast. Not to mention some fine character actors, lending some solid support to the proceedings. Still, thanks to a screenplay, riddled with cliches, the film fails to add anything new to the thriller genre

Tom Hardy (Bruce Willis) is a maverick cop who's not afraid to rock the boat in pursuit of a sadistic serial killer. Demoted to river patrol after suggesting the killer may be a fellow police officer, he initiates an unauthorized investigation. His new partner, Jo (Sarah Jessica Parker) climbs aboard with a surprise of her own, as the conspiracy closes in around them.

Director Rowdy Herrington, who is also credited as co-writer of the film's script with Martin Kaplan, puts together a film that feels all too familiar. The "twists" of the movie are fairly easy to spot, and if it wasn't for the work of Willis, who does a solid job--the movie would be almost forgettable. What should play out like a "page turning pulp mystery", instead, the story connects most of the dots for the viewer. What a shame.

Given my thoughts on the film, I was not at all suprised by the lack of extras, on the DVD. All that's there is the movie's theatrical trailer Those that end up watching Striking Distance can choose to do so, in either the full-screen, or widescreen formats.

What a disappointment. The DVD only garners a two star rating, not my usual feeling about a Bruce Willis flick...

This movie is absolutely awful; one of several Willis flops from the mid to late 90's ("Color of Night", "Die Hard With A Vengeance", "Last Man Standing", "The Jackal"). However, his other films at least had semi-coherent, albeit predictable, plot lines and decent acting. "Striking Distance" is full every cop/thriller cliché you can think of, the only difference being the fact that Willis plays a water policeman, which by the end of the movie is neither here nor there.

The story sees Willis' character's father (also a police officer) en route to a policeman's ball is throw into a chase scene in which the car (naturally) crashes, and is killed. Though it seems his death is not as a result of the accident, but rather from bullet wounds. Fast-forward to a few years later and bodies are being found dumped in the river that Willis' character patrols. Of course, this all becomes serious when it is apparent the same killer, possibly a serial killer, is committing the murders. Now the hunt is on (surprise, surprise) and Willis suspects this may all be somehow related to his father's death.

What could have been an intelligent and interesting story soon slides below the limbo bar of film mediocrity. Sarah Jessica Parker "co-stars" as the typical love interest, but she has no chemistry with Willis she barley has more than a paragraph of dialogue with him. This is just one of many pointless characters peppered throughout the film. The most annoying one being some cop who has it in for Willis, but you're never sure why, and his confrontations are used as filler (i.e. they have no connection to the murder or to any other plot point). There is an absolutely pathetic scene at the end of the film where after mouthing off at Willis, he has to be held back after Willis makes some half-baked one liner. Watch with awe how terribly unconvincing the acting is!

Getting back to the plot, the ending is somewhat interesting and for a moment the scriptwriters decided to actually write some scenes that aren't pointless, but the final confrontation is so overblown and overacted it's simply painful to watch.

I do not own the DVD of "Striking Distance". I first watched it on TV a few years ago. It was on again not too long ago, and on second viewing (here was I thinking, "It couldn't have been that bad!") I was reminded of how utterly awful this movie is.

What many people fail to realize is that this is an unintentional comedy. For example, on their way to the policeman's ball Hardy and father get into a car chase that ends in a wreck. Hardy is pulled from the overturned car with a leg injury hours after it happens (it was daylight before, now it is dark and the ambulance is waiting) and the first thing his rescuers have him do is stand up! Hilarious. Also, don't miss Hardy's constipated expression whenever he fires his gun.

Terrific cast is wasted in this movie.

In my book, the very worst films are the ones that take a lot of talented people, all of whom have done great work elsewhere, and deliver them into a cinematic meatgrinder. "Battlefield Earth" is one such film, and "Striking Distance" is another.

This film manages to completely waste Bruce Willis, Sarah Jessica Parker, Dennis Farina, Tom Sizemore, Robert Pastorelli, Brion James, and Andre Braugher, all of whom are tremendous actors who've done fine work elsewhere. But in "Striking Distance," it seems that they were all in it for a paycheck, and little else.

When bad movies are filled with hack actors, and were obviously done on a nonexistent budget, at least you know the movie couldn't have been better.

But when you have a bomb like this populated with this kind of talent, and obviously the product of a serious budget, the problem is that the people making it just didn't give a darn.

Gag. Ugh. Please, do me a favor and never see this movie unless the only other flick in the house is (cough) Forever Young. For a HUGE fan of Die Hard, this movie was just a punishment to sit through. When it ended, I almost put the tape on the barby, and barely stopped myself from using it to decorate Neighbor _____'s new swimming pool.
Willis stars as a cop whose daddy is killed several years before, and naturally he sinks in a depression. Typically, the form of cure comes in Sarah Jessica Parker, who looks as much as a cop as Matthew Broderick looks like Superman. The setting is wonderful, worth one star, and the clever idea to use "Little Red Ridinghood" as the killer's theme song earns the other. But at the end, when Willis goes head to head with the killer, you just sit there screaming "WHY- WON'T- YOU- DIE?!" as the killer manages to avoid being shot, hit by a train, and drowning. That is the stupidest protagonist/antagonist battle I have ever seen, even worse than Seattle hosting the WTO. Willis makes an effort to save the movie, which equals to Leonardo DiCaprio holding up the Titanic. For a much better Willis flick, try seeing THe Fifth Element, or The Sixth Sense, of The Whole Nine Yards. Most of his good movies ('sides Die Hard) come with a number, and not a reference to "Hit Me Baby One More Time". Face it, Willis fans. This flick is one sinking ship.

Not great "literaure," as it were, but an engaging action yarn as entertainment. Good, complex and well executed vehicle chases. Restrained murder violence, which is more suggested than seen (good, in my book). A rather captivating leading lady (Sarah Jessica Parker). Some good character acting, e.g. the byplay between Willis and his policeman father at the beginning of the film before Dad gets offed. Much location shooting in Pittsburgh, you really get a sense of those rivers.

Hey, it's only an entertainment. I didn't go to sleep during this one. Nil extras on the DVD, though, only a trailer.

This movie follows one of the typical cop movie plots -- discgraced cop being tormented, The setting is not the typical Chicago or Los Angeles, rather it follows Bruce Willis as a river cop in Pittsburgh. The plot is not very deep and if you think about things too hard you may be unhappy. The movie does provide plenty of good exciting entertainment with plenty of cool Bruce Willis "looks". Sarah Jessica Parker does a great job playing his unwanted partner (another standard cop movie cliche) too.

I thought the ending dragged on a bit long, but overall it was very enjoyable.

Going beyond the usual criticism of the myriad of action-movie cliches used (and badly at that) in this movie, one of my main problems with it was the treatment of women. It's a bit bizarre. In the beginning a bound and gagged woman is strangled (off-screen) to the song "Little Red Riding Hood". Next scene, her body is pulled out of a car's trunk (wrapped in sheets, but blood is visibly soaking them) and dragged and dumped into a river. Another scene one of Tom Hardy's ex-girlfriends (who's a miserable actress even in the three lines she utters) is zapped by the villian, tied to a chair and shot at point-blank range (mostly off-camera, though blood streams down her bound ankles) while she screams blood-curdlingly. In another scene Tom (Willis) finds another of his ex-girlfriends floating in the Ohio. Her body is dragged ashore and analyzed by forensic specialists (two gunshot wounds are visible on her chest), whilst one cop makes sickening comments about how Tom should have "one last poke" before they cart off the poor girl's body. All this is rather atrocious in its own right, without considering the fact that Tom quickly became aware, after the first slaying of one of his ex-girlfriends, that the killer was after girls he's known, and yet never bothers to warn the other girls who are still alive and could have been saved (ie-Nurse Paula). And then, as a final testament to the indifference paid to violence against women, Tom (in the epilogue) visits the grave of HIS FATHER, but doesnt think to maybe visit the graveS of his three dead ex-girlfriends. Granted there's no violence against women SHOWN on camera, but there's plenty to imply that ol' Rowdy and others involved in shooting this (cough) film have a little hang up with women. Or at the very least they dont think highly of the other sex.