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Trespass
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Walter
Hill may not be among the most fashionable of action directors in the ‘90s, but
he is still surely one of the best.
Trespass is an unusual project in that it is
a tough, all-male thriller produced and written by the normally lighthearted
team of Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (Back to the Future, 1985).
But it seems to have been tailored for Hill's familiar skills and sensibility:
this multi-racial ensemble of guys inexorably flipping out and betraying each
other over an ever-elusive goal could just as easily be the anti-heroes of his
masterpiece Southern Comfort (1981).
Rather
like in a John Huston movie parable of old (The
Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948), the story details the complicated
dealings over a stash of gold hidden long ago in a now abandoned factory, where
virtually the entire plot plays itself out.
Hill
delineates in precise moves the struggle between the white boys (William Sadler
and Bill Paxton) who hole themselves up in a room with the gold, and the black
consortium of dealers and criminals (led by rapper Ice T) who lay siege upon
the intruders.
Hill
unfolds the dissolution of every interpersonal allegiance, and the reversal of
all narrative expectations, with a gleeful, cold-blooded cynicism. His nervy
camera movements and rigorous concentration on essential narrative information
give the film tremendous energy and excitement.
In
the wake of the Rodney King beating, the script builds in a particularly
chilling role for a home video camera – and a particularly hilarious one for
Ice T's mobile phone.
MORE Hill: Extreme Prejudice, Red Heat, Geronimo © Adrian Martin September 1993 |
