Cohen and Tate (1989)

With a momentary glance at the poster, Cohen & Tate appears to be somewhere in the realm of those buddy cop thrillers that proved so popular in the 1980s, with tough-guy poses and its two central characters named right there in the title accompanied by an ampersand. At least that's the impression I got. In fact, Eric Red's directorial debut is anything but. Part road movie and part tense thriller - and occasionally struggling when switching between the two - Cohen & Tate is a menacing, violent and often plain mental neo-noir, with a chilling performance by Roy Scheider at its centre. Often veering into territory marked by the Coen Brothers, Red, who also wrote the script, demands that you spend 90 minutes with two bickering, cold-blooded killers as the life of a child hangs in the balance. And it proves to be a pretty riveting experience, even though it requires you to suspend your disbelief for the duration.We open at a farm house, where a seemingly all-American family are in hiding for unexplained reasons. FBI agents surround the house, but that doesn't stop hit-men Cohen (Scheider) and Tate (Adam Baldwin) from breaking in and murdering everyone in sight except the 9 year-old son, Travis (Harley Cross). Instead, they whisk him away in their car to deliver him to their bosses. What they have in store for him is unknown, as the eponymous anti-heroes are as much in the dark as we are. Yet they have made a terrible blunder: On the radio they learn that the father has survived and has already given descriptions of the killers to the police. The hot-headed Tate wants to ice the child right there and then, but the wiser, more level- headed Cohen insists on finishing the job as planned. Sensing distrust between the two men, Travis takes the opportunity to turn them against each other and plan his escape.The film plays out from there as a series of vignettes, usually involving the increasingly volatile Tate going off the rails and threatening to kill young Travis. These screaming outbursts are repeated so often that it becomes unintentionally comical, similar in many ways to Bill Paxton's over-the-top character in Near Dark, which was also written by Red. Scheider, however, subtly oozes menace. He may be the more balanced of the two, but it's easy to believe that he's capable of executing a child. The mean-spirited tone works in favour of the film, which ultimately delivers its thrills most effectively when things turn really nasty. The majority of the action takes place in the claustrophobic confines of the car, and the film's main strength is the sharp and often amusing dialogue between the titular bad men. It's ridiculous and messy, but it's damn good fun, any film in which a character eats a box of matches to prove how crazy they are is a winner in my book.

Cohen & Tate is directed by Eric Red who also adapts the screenplay from the short story "The Ransom of Red Chief" written by O. Henry. It stars Roy Scheider, Adam Baldwin, Harley cross, Suzanne Savoy and Marco Perella. Music is by Bill Conti and cinematography by Victor J. Kemper.Two professional hit men known as Cohen (Scheider) and Tate (Baldwin) kidnap 9 year old Travis Knight (Cross) from the Witness Protection Program and set off to deliver him to mob bosses in Houston. But with the wise old Cohen the polar opposite of the younger and psychotic Tate, young Travis senses an opportunity to turn the pair of them against each other to maybe manufacture his escape?After a quite brutal opening, Cohen and Tate settles into a road movie where 90% of the action is based in a car populated by only three characters. The premise is simple, an increasingly psychotic Tate (Baldwin overacting to within an inch of his life) wants to kill the annoying kid in the back seat. Cohen (a graceful and film saving Scheider) is not having that, he may be a hit-man but he still has codes and orders to adhere to. Travis the kid (Cross is whiny and poor) chips away at each man's psyche, causing a fractured atmosphere that ensures we are never quite sure how it will end up. In fact the finale is actually a doozy.That Cohen & Tate is no forgotten masterpiece is down to uneven direction, poor acting away from Scheider and an all round preposterous feeling to it all. Credibility and logic is stretched to breaking point, often, while the dialogue doesn't sit right with the characters on show. Frustrating really because in spite of its problems it's a very watchable picture that has a strong premise at its core, and Scheider is definitely a reason to take a punt on a viewing. Even if he, and us, deserve a better movie as a whole. 7/10

Why hasn't Cohen And Tate come out on DVD? This film was made in 1988 and not only hasn't it been released on DVD, it's only been on British TV twice and twice in the same night only on ITV2 about four years ago. It took a British TV channel long enough to finally show it and Sky TV have never shown it on any movie channels out of all people. At least we can buy it on DVD and it's not even coming out on DVD.If we ask the distributors they will say it might not sell because hardly anyone has asked about it. That's because most people twenty-one years old and under haven't had the chance to see it to make an opinion.I bet if Cohen And Tate was made as a re-make that would be quick enough to come out on DVD when a lot of us are more interested in the original. I hope Cohen And Tate doesn't have a re-make because how many more re-makes are we getting? Damn, The Taking Of Pelham One, Two, Three has just been re-made and I suspected that a couple of years ago.

I began watching this movie on t.v. some weeks ago, but gave up after the first 10 minutes or so. At the start, the person on the witness protection scheme located in an isolated farmhouse becomes nervous about his exterior placed guards, and then asks the guard inside the house whether he can make a telephone call - only to discover the line has been cut.Shortly afterwards, Roy Scheider as one of the witness's assassins turns up and duly executes the witness and his wife - upon which the Roy Scheider character duly picks up the wall telephone in the kitchen, dials a number, and then speaks: It is done!!!! That was it for me!