A Texas Ranger (Nick Nolte) is at war with a local drug kingpin who used to be his best friend (Powers Boothe).
A new accelerant is added to this personal Cold War when a group of ex-special forces soldiers arrive in town for a major - and illegal - operation…
I love genre movies.
But I think I like to be a little more invested in the characters.
Maybe that is why (thus far) I find Walter Hill’s work a little hard to get into.
He works in myth and archetypes - he takes his genre works and pared them to their bones.
Character is created through action. It is what the medium deserves.
But even at that level, Extreme Prejudice feels a tad too rote. Part of the issue is that it feels like the movie is juggling one too many plot lines.
Extreme Prejudice also has way more plot than I expected.
According to what I’ve read of the production, Michael Ironside’s sections of the movie were significantly cut down. While the story is fairly straightforward, the two storylines prevent the movie from having a firm centre.
The covert plot line is meant to provide some context and juxtaposition to the conflict between Jack Benteen (Nolte) and Cash Bailey (Boothe). But it ends up feeling like its own movie - and not as resonant as the conflict between stars Nolte and Boothe.
Because when the film cuts away from the conspiracy subplot and focuses on these two, the movie becomes far more interesting.
Laconic and emotionally reserved, Benteen is an old school lawman, out of time.
Powers Boothe is Benteen’s Id, expressive and completely undisciplined.
They are the dramatic equivalent of a double act, with Benteen as the straight man.
They are established as such a moral binary, it takes the presence of other characters to undermine that divide, and to re-contextualise their conflict as pointless.
Maria Conchita Alonso’s Sarita, the woman they both love, is not just a catalyst for their conflict. Indeed, she actively fights against being put in that role.
When juxtaposed with Alonso, Noltr comes across as dangerously self-destructive.
When hero and villain square up for an old fashioned duel, the familiar tableaux is disturbed and its mythic undertones stripped away by Sarita’s presence.
She is either the background of shots, or her voice is part of the soundtrack, puncturing the men’s posturing by pointing out they’re both “crazy”.
Even though - spoilers - Benteen kills Bailey, there is no catharsis.
This lack of resolution is only further cemented when Benteen ends the standoff with Bailey’s goons by making a deal to get away. The scene ends with the leader of Bailey’s henchmen picking up his hat and putting it on.
After all the bloodshed (since this is the Eighties, it is also filled with heavy machine gunfire and explosions), we end on an impasse - and with a new boss in charge of Bailey’s drug operation.
The cycle of violence will continue.
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