Movies
Shoot to Kill
One long chase. The fugitive, a vicious killer, abducts a female trail guide to lead him into Canada, and the guide's lover, and fellow woodsman and mountaineer, sets out to save her but is forced to drag along as a ball-and-chain an FBI "tenderfoot." Most of the action flows easily and appropriately (and picturesquely, in the Pacific Northwest) from the given situation. But a chase that demands the confronting and surmounting of mountains ought to end in the mountains. It is only fit and proper. A return to the city afterwards, to carry on the chase, tends to trivialize the ordeal in the wilderness -- to say nothing of the nagging little fact that there isn't a reason in the world why the killer would continue to hang on to his hostage once they are out of the woods. And the action itself at that point simply gets to be too much: it's a bit (not a lot) like a Mahler symphony where eventually you want to snap, "Come on, pick an ending!" With Sidney Poitier, Tom Berenger, and Kirstie Alley; directed by Roger Spottiswoode. 1988.
Reader Rating:
MPAA Rating: R