I wonder if there's a four hour cut of this movie out there - it could do with it because there's far too much story for the running time. Really this is two movies rubbing up against each other - the saga of a covert special ops unit who wind up in Texas to do a job, and a Texan sheriff (Nick Nolte) whose childhood friend (Powers Boothe) is a drug dealer and both love the same woman (Maria Conchito Alonso).
Maybe all this could have worked if there'd been more rigorous with the storytelling but it takes an hour of the two groups to meet and the final confrontation is very rushed. It really needed to be act one setting them up then act two they have an uneasy relationship then act three is the big confrontation.
It's a shame because some of this is quite good. The action is done in full throttle late 80s way - lots of explosions, and big bangs and people falling through glass. Nolte is perfectly case as is Boothe and Michael Ironside; Alonso does what she can with her part. Clancy Brown is fantastic as one of the special ops guys - I wish his part had been bigger. Some of the smaller parts are well cast like the black bodyguard for Boothe, and the accountant with super thick glasses.
The finale is reminiscent of The Wild Bunch but this isn't as artfully written. In that movie the men had a specific reason to go to their deaths - it was a conscious choice to do it. Here the special ops crew make no such choice - only two of them find out about Ironside's betrayal. They needed to make a conscious decision.
At the end Boothe and Nolte are about to do a shoot out... the zombie unit have had this big fight and are all dead... then Boothe and Nolte resume their stand off. It's like, we don't care by then. There's been a massive shoot out.
The Mexican characters are mostly jabbering bit parts except Alonso, who is a possession, and I guess Boothe's sidekick.
Far too much time is wasted on setting up Nolte - there's an opening shoot out, then another shoot out then I think another shoot out where I think Rip Torn is killed (and we don't care even though he gives a good performance because he's just a crusty gun toting sheriff). The zombie unit arrive and set up... and the. bank robbery is not very well done, they're captured quite easily... I didn't think much of their skills no wonder Nolte captures them. There's not enough scenes between Nolte and the unit.
This film should have been simple. The zombie unit are ruthless but have some residual honor except for Ironside who has gone fully bad. Nolte has honor but Boothe doesn't. Nolte and Boothe both love the same woman.
The cast for the zombie unit is interesting - Ironside and Brown are very good, Bill Forsythe is a floppy haired sexual harasser (for a cover ops guy he makes a lot of lecherous call outs to women at an airport), Matt Mulhern was in Biolxi Blues, Larry Scott was the gay Lamar from Revenge of the Nerds. I'm surprised Hill didn't put a female in the zombie unit.
A bit of a mess but I did watch it. The way Nolte buttoned up his shirt to the neck was annoying - wasn't it really hot?
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