Two-Minute Warning (1976)

I'm not sure why this film is rated so low on IMDb. Maybe it's just considered hip to do so, or it's just people following the crowd.This is actually an excellent thriller! And, what makes it so good is the dispassionate way it goes about its story telling. Its characters are cool in temperament, doing their jobs carefully and surgically, lending a great deal of authenticity to the high concept: A sniper has taken position to fire on unknown patrons at a Super-Bowl-type game.This approach extends to the chilling finale, which you will have to see for yourself. It is impressive and spectacular. And, the ending is unique from a character perspective.The film is made very well, from direction to script to acting. And, the crew does very well too, including cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld, who especially mounts some awesome images in the finale. And, Charles Fox, who comes up with a chilling, dissonant theme of sorts for the sniper, and shows excellent judgment in when to provide score and when to not.This thriller is recommended for those who love taught, realistic, albeit violent, films.********* (9 Out of 10 Stars)

An exciting final two minutes to be sure. Unfortunately you must sit through nearly two hours of absolute boredom to get there. A crazed sniper perches atop the time clock at the LA Coliseum during a football game. He scopes out various audience members while cop Charlton Heston and SWAT commander John Cassavetes figure out what to do. There's zero suspense until the film's final moments when gunfire begins. The stars populating the under-developed story lines include Jack Klugman, David Janssen, Beau Bridges and Walter Pidgeon. Director Larry Peerce shows little flair for suspense despite having directed the dynamite NYC transit thriller THE INCIDENT ten years prior. Heston grits his teeth, barks "damn" and "bastard" a few times while Cassavettes looks bored senseless. Gena Rowlands, Marilyn Hassett and Martin Balsam are in it too and there are lots of ariel shots from the Good Year blimp.

What's most interesting to me about Two-Minute Warning is that it's exactly the sort of middle-of-the-road Hollywood flick that they simply will not make anymore. It isn't in the least bit arty, it's not a great script, it doesn't require method acting of its actors, nor a Ph.D. in psychology to understand. What it is, is blunt, brutal, and matter-of-fact. It's almost completely untainted with sentimentality (just a touch here and there), and it isn't trying to orchestrate your feelings as if your emotions were a violin section. It's just telling a sort of ugly but gripping story, and goes about it a step at a time. Today when you go to a movie that covers similar thematic territory, the script is almost always overwritten, and badly written. (Both, with each amplifying the other's ugliness: because scripts are so overwritten -- that is, because you so loudly hear the voice of the author over the voice of the characters -- you are all the more painfully aware of the mediocrity of that voice, and of its allegiance to bland corporate values instead of specific human ones). The studios have gotten storytelling down to such a maudlin formula that they will keep bringing new "writers" onto the project until every box on their list of heart-tugging, tear-welling, triumph-savoring emotional epiphanies is represented and over-represented in every script. The end result as a viewer is sort of the storytelling equivalent of watching a two-hour tape of, um, climax shots from porn -- you are so oversaturated with "excitement" that all you see is the ridiculous falsity of everything.So, even though Two-Minute Warning is not a great movie, even though no-one would likely get nominated for an Academy Award for writing it, it is a movie worth seeing, because it demonstrates that you can tell a story without pretense, and that a solid story, told without pretense, is far more enjoyable to sit through than a grandiose one, told with pretensions that seem to emanate from a supernaturally limitless well somewhere beneath the Earth's crust in Burbank. When I come grousing out of another horrible summer action movie, and the anti-intellectuals in the crowd sneer that "not everything has to be Bergman", I want to tell them, "no, but everything could at least be Two-Minute Warning -- is that setting the bar too high for you?" The film is entertaining, suspenseful, violent, disturbing, and it has some pretty good actors just playing rather ordinary cops that are fun to watch (John Cassavetes? Are you kidding me?). I sure wish they'd make more movies like this to fill out the schedule these days.

I just watched Two Minute Warning on DVD, and believe the film can be viewed from two different perspectives, either as a schlocky popcorn flick or as I prefer a stinging indictment of the American dream.The film presents a collection of reflective ciphers of or chasing after: The American dream, set against a backdrop of an important Super bowl game which acts as thematic frame upon which to hang parallel characters. The sniper is a metaphorical cultural surgeon, as the film opens with him snuffing out a middle-aged cyclist, replete in synthetic modern tracksuit, the cyclist is of course still chasing after the American dream. An injury burnt ball-player with vivacious young and demanding girlfriend can be viewed as a dream casualty; initially hungry exploiter now almost exhaustively exploited for the purpose of entertainment to which American football occupies one of many sporting dream pinnacles.Jack Klugman is desperately chasing his vision of the dream via high risk stakes gambling, with money which is not his own, putting his life at risk as he literally tries to get rich whilst almost dying, trying. Then we have David Jansen and his girlfriend who are entangled within a tired and respect-less relationship with Jansen more interested in running off to Las Vegas for some gambling after he proposes to his beleaguered girlfriend with what in all probability will be a quick and doomed marriage.Archetypal young family guy: Beau Bridges heads the prototypical dysfunctional family that decades later would be fodder for: The Jerry Springer Show, as we witness father chastise his barely long haired youngest son for being wise when the kid rebukes his dad's imposing conservatism with "everyone can see" in response to being told that his hair is too long. Bridges later attempt at model citizenry by informing the police that there is a sniper in the coliseum backfires on him with the brave boys in blue attempting to cart him off somewhat ambiguously for further questioning, do the police believe he may be a suspect in cahoots with the sniper or are they just trying to stop a panic situation, too late, as by this point the dream culture cleansing has begun with Jansen's girlfriend arbitrarily spared a prolongation of their mutually unsatisfying relationship.The enclosed and insulated television crew, media spinning the ball-game with their customary brand of all-American labelling; as we are all too aware of today, their egos quietened as the carnage unfolds; reality crashing through their subjectively controlled and packaged, vicarious version of reality. An unsuspecting long haired teenager who has clambered up, out of the designated seating area makes himself a target of the now twitchy, prior hung-ho, swat boys who heavy handedly remove him from his perch, upon suspicion of what may be contained within his rucksack, triggering fear that he may be the snipers accomplice; supplicate topical paranoia. Long-haired young men do not fit the profile as signed up card carrying pursuers of the American dream.Assorted ill reflections upon the dream pop up through-out the picture. Robert Ginty (who would later play a similar kind of Exterminator) as the happy-go-lucky yet avaricious novelty hat seller who fleeces cash-strapped Bridges, embarrassingly obligated to fulfil expectations of the dream when his youngest son announces that his father has no money; plays out the father to son baton handing of the dream, be who you want, have what you want, when you want it.The lone alcoholic proffering his poison for the solicitation of Jansen's eager to facilitate lady-friend, her eye on her dream, garments of wealth and prosperity, coverting her true longing. The respectable looking Walter Pidgeon failing to pickpocket the film's singular paid up ball-game viewer to be held in esteem by the filmmakers, that of a doctor beguiled by a female onlooker acting as chaperon to an insecure male counterpart who wishes not to be seen in public without requisite female date, trappings of his American dream. During the ensuing human crush we witness said doctor saving the life of his new found lady fan; clinging to life from a stairwell of white concrete.The sniper's supposed target, that of the man who sits atop the American dream, never arrives. When the bullets begin raining down on this most veneer thin picture of national conservative pride the true spirit of American humanity bulldozes through in an everyman for himself helter-skelter stampede; as a supposedly civilised gathering reverts back to the days of the rush for land the gold rush the oil rush the arms rush the space rush the global greed rush of collapse.Little wonder why this film bombed on its theatrical release, striking a deep resonant chord within the American psyche. Witness today American's on IMDb's discussion boards label up the film with outraged impotent cries of "Utter Crap" The picture of themselves reflected back through this now time-capsule piece of effective culture and ideal mirroring.What of Charlton Heston I hear you say, well he represents moderate conservatism, committed by a sense of duty, but willing to provide the trigger happy swat'ers their neccessitation for existence of pumping lead kicks' as a final solution. The larger than life Heston is surrounded by this carnival of human frailty.