#Elias koteas casey jones my beloved

[yorshie]

[nitrateglow]

Thoughts on Desperate Hours (1990)

I watched the 1990 Desperate Hours as additional research for a blog post I plan to do about the 1955 The Desperate Hours in June. The original film is a strong home invasion flick about an upper-middle class family held hostage by three escaped convicts, based on a very strong play of the same name. By comparison, this remake has a bad reputation.

Holy God in heaven, it DESERVES every bit of that bad reputation. I don't know how much of the blame I can place on the director Michael Cimino (of all people!)-- allegedly, the film was cut to hell and back against his wishes. Given the choppy editing throughout, I can believe it.

It looks like a TV movie and feels like one.

Compared to the original, the villains are all boring. Like this movie is technically more violent than the 1950s one and yet there's like only a quarter of the tension. Mickey Rourke is sometimes threatening, but his cohorts come off as too idiotic to ever be as much.

Just about every character is annoying, unlikable, or underdeveloped. They tried making the family more neurotic and flawed, but they come off as annoying, out of touch rich people (the mom yelling at the repair people on the phone like a Karen really riled me up-- I'm supposed to like this woman??). Aside from the son, I could not have cared less about any of them. And unlike Lady in a Cage or the Cape Fear remake where the home invasion victims are flawed people, these folks don't have the decency to be interesting to watch,

Even Anthony Hopkins chewing the scenery and breaking teeth on said scenery cannot save it.

So many pointless boob shots.

They whittled down the original play/1955 film's class themes to basically nothing. They pay lip service to it now and then by having Mickey Rourke mention how rich his victims are, but that's it.

A few good things:

Elias Koteas is one of the baddies. He played Casey Jones in my beloved 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, so I always grin when I see him in anything solely due to the association. Unfortunately, his character is absolutely useless, neither threatening, deep, nor entertaining.

The little kid plays an NES-- I believe the game is Punch-Out. I played my cousin's NES when I was a kid in the 90s, so it gave me nostalgic vibes.

Neither of these good things has anything to do with any part of the movie actually being good. They just briefly reminded me joy and beauty do exist somewhere in this rotten universe.

Avoid at all costs, people.