Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Walter Hill
Starring: Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Michael Ironside, María Conchita Alonso, Rip Torn, William Forsythe,
Clancy Brown
Walter Hill's Extreme Prejudice is loaded with so
much testosterone that if you don't have a hairy chest before watching
it, you'll look like Burt Reynolds by the time the credits roll and half
of Texas/Mexico has been gunned down onscreen. The movie began life as a
planned project in the '70s for John Milius, who described it as
"a right wing Costa Gavras" film. In the years before its 1987 release
it was reworked to reflect America's newfound mistrust of its
institutions, something that would arguably appeal more to the left in
the Reagan years.
Michael Ironside is at his stone-faced best as Major Paul
Hackett, leader of "Zombie Unit," a CIA black-ops team whose members
have all been declared officially dead so they can be used to perform
all manner of dodgy operations their government doesn't want to be
linked with. Zombie Unit's latest assignment sees them sent to a small
Texas town on the Mexican border. Having once been a CIA informant, Cash
Bailey (Powers Boothe) has set up a massive drugs operation
across the river in Mexico, using his knowledge of sensitive information
to keep the feds off his back. Hackett and his men plan to stage a
robbery at the local bank, where Bailey keeps a dossier filled with
enough incriminating evidence to seriously embarrass Washington.
What Hackett didn't factor in was the local Texas Ranger, Jack Benteen
(Nick Nolte), a Gary Cooper figure who also happens to be a
childhood friend of Bailey's. He's also now involved with Mexican saloon
singer Sarita (María Conchita Alonso), who was once Bailey's
lover. When a bomb is set off in the middle of town, Benteen appeals to
his old friend to give himself up, but Bailey is having none of it, and
it seems they're a-headed for a killin'.
Extreme Prejudice is a very old-fashioned film, even for
1987. Its setup owes much to Richard Fleischer's
Violent Saturday, though while the local townsfolk were key characters in Fleischer's
film, here they serve merely as collateral damage. Hill and his writers
are more interested in the conflict-a-trois between Benteen, Bailey and
Hackett, with the love triangle between Benteen, Sarita and Bailey
something of an afterthought. Alonso does her best but her character is
little more than a stereotypical senorita, a pawn between two gringos
set to draw guns for her affection.
If you're looking for a movie that passes the Bechdel Test,
Extreme Prejudice ain't for you. This is a man's movie
goddammit, filled with hulking brutes who can take a dozen bullets in
the chest and still come at you firing. Adding to the macho quotient is
Rip Torn as a local Sheriff who serves as a sort of Walter
Brennan figure to Nolte's John Wayne and says things like "only thing
worse than a politician is a child molester." It's almost a reprisal of
the character he played in William Tannen's similarly themed 1984
thriller Flashpoint, in which local Texas officers find themselves caught up in the JFK
conspiracy. Like Ben Gazzara'a Road House antagonist,
Boothe's Cash Bailey is one of those classic '80s bad guys who really
enjoys being an '80s bad guy. When we meet him first he's swigging
tequila and crushing a scorpion in his fist, numbed to physical pain by
alcohol, coke and adrenaline. Nolte by contrast is a sturdy oak, toning
down the histrionics he had become known for by this point to deliver a
stoic Randolph Scott impersonation.
A subplot involving Andy Robinson as a CIA agent liaising with Hackett
was famously cut from the movie, and the result is a late twist that is
conveyed somewhat sloppily. But that's the only real complaint for a
movie that genuinely lives up to a title like
Extreme Prejudice. As he has done so often, Hill takes a b-movie plot and elevates it
with A-plus direction and actors that fit squarely into their character
templates while adding humanity, or in several cases here, inhumanity.
Hill is also known for loving a squib or two, and in the
Wild Bunch inspired finale he does his old mentor
Peckinpah proud by painting the white-washed walls of a Mexican town
red. Now, I'm off to eat a raw steak.
