Shoot to Kill (Roger Spottiswoode, 1988)

On the hunt for a mysterious killer, FBI agent Warren Stantin (Sidney Poitier) discovers his quarry has joined a hunting party heading for the Canadian border.

He joins forces with mountaineer Jonathan Knox (Tom Berenger), whose partner (Kirstie Alley), is leading the party.

While the pair struggle against time and terrain, there is a greater obstacle they will have to overcome: each other.

 Starring Sidney Poitier and Tom Berenger, Shoot to Kill (aka Deadly Pursuit) is a terse action thriller that makes effective use of its stars and effectively balances their characters' respective skillsets.

A buddy movie without the comedy, Shoot to Kill is sadly underrated.

I first heard about it after Poitier's passing - from memory, a local arthouse decided to play this as their tribute screening, rather than one of his more recognisable titles.

At the time, Shoot to Kill was the star's return to screens after 11 years.

First, time to eat some crow.

I have been rather dismissive of director Roger Spottiswoode, largely based on my disinterest in his Bond entry, Tomorrow Never Dies, and his Arnie vehicle The 6th Day. I never thought he was a bad director - he just seemed to lack anything special to recommend him.

Shoot to Kill is a really fine picture, and Spottiswoode is a big reason why.

I was especially excited by the variety of different locations, and how he found unique ways to photograph them. You always feel like you are moving between distinctly different environments, with new challenges and stakes.

If you are familiar with Clancy Brown's distinct tones, his reveal as the bad guy will come as the least surprising reveal in the movie. What makes this reveal shocking and effective is that once his identity is revealed to the audience, the film does not extend the cat-and-mouse with the other members of the travelling party - he just kills them all.

It is an economical story-telling choice, but also reinforces the character's ruthlessness and the stakes for our bickering heroes. 

As the leads, Poitier and Berenger are an effective double act - while they have a little back and forth, most of their conflict is nonverbal, conveyed through their differing reactions and approaches to obstacles.

It is an interesting approach that enlivens a familiar buddy dynamic.

While most of the action takes place in the wilderness, the third act shifts back to an urban setting, which reorients the pair’s dynamic. Rather than obvious signposting, the film just has Knox quietly take a backseat to Stanton’s greater skills and knowledge in the city.

Un-flashy but intelligently assembled, Shoot to Kill is a fine showcase for its stars, and its director’s talents.

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BONDIFICATING: Why they walked away

When Daniel Craig was blown to smithereens at the end of 2021’s No Time To Die, it marked not just the first time the character’s demise was shown, it also marked the one time a Bond actor had the opportunity to craft his own exit. 

His predecessors had very different experiences…

Sean Connery says never again… again and again

By the mid-sixties, Sean Connery was losing interest in the role that made him a star. His relationship with the producers had deteriorated - Connery  felt like he was not receiving the financial compensation he deserved, while the producers seemed to be raking in profits.

The final straw was the intense publicity during location filming in Japan for You Only Live Twice - including an incident in which photographers followed him into the bathroom. 

Believing the character was more important than the actor, the producers let him out of his six film contract and moved on with one-time Bond Lazenby. 

Following Lazenby’s departure, Connery was lured back by a 1.125m pound fee for 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever. Despite a rumoured 5m pound offer to return again, Connery declared it a one-time deal - he would never return to the role of Bond again…

Until he did in 1983’s unofficial Never Say Never Again, whereupon he again declared this was the end of the road (unless you count 1996’s The Rock).

George Lazenby

The youngest person to ever play Bond, Lazenby felt that Bond was past its used-by date in the Age of Aquarius. He walked away from a seven film contract (which could have seen him into the early 80s) to make his own franchise with Universal Soldier (nope, not that one). 

Roger Moore

After his original contract ran out in the late seventies, Roger Moore made repeated statements that he was retiring from Bondage. 

During the making of For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy, Moore stated that this was definitely going to be his final film. 

Aside from Moore, other factors helped extend his tenure - an unimpressive list of potential successors and the threat of a rival Bond production headlined by Sean Connery made Moore a reliable set of hands. 

When Moore finally did hang up the Walther after A View To A Kill, it was reportedly because he discovered that he was older than his leading lady’s mother.

I have nothing to back this up but pure gut, but I wonder if the reason why Craig’s death was so explicit in No Time To Die was to avoid repeating Moore’s example.

Timothy Dalton

Following the release of Licence to Kill, Dalton sounded dour about whether the franchise would continue, but remained onboard until the earliest stages of GoldenEye, seeing it as an opportunity to end his run on a high note. However when he learned producer Cubby Broccoli would want him around for multiple installments, he amicably bowed out.

Pierce Brosnan

A lifelong Bond fan, Brosnan first came on the producers’ radar during the making of For Your Eyes Only, in which his wife Cassandra Harris had a supporting role.

After winning and losing the role in 1986 due to last-minute conflicts with his  contract for TV series Remington Steele, Brosnan got a second chance in 1995, bringing the franchise back from the dead after a 6 year absence. 

By the mid-noughts however, the combination of the Austin Powers franchise, the arrival of a more contemporary spy in Jason Bourne and real world events (the September 11 attacks) had rendered his Bond obsolete. 

Brosnan was ready to go for a fifth instalment, but eventually the producers made the decision to break with the established template and Brosnan had to give up the role.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

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Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)

Following the murder of a beautiful woman he picked up from the road, private dick Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) finds himself the object of scrutiny from both the law, and other parties.

Sniffing money, Hammer decides to pick up the trail from the murdered woman - a fateful decision for which he will have to pay a heavy price.

With the nuclear threat back at the forefront of world attention, and the seemingly rapid collapse of the American empire, Kiss Me Deadly’s apocalyptic satire feels all the more evergreen.

I have watched it a couple of times. This last viewing is the one where I have liked it the most.

In fact this screening was something of a revelation.

I was hit by the arctic nothingness at the core of the film’s central character: Hammer’s thirst to profit from the ‘great whatsit’ is so pure.

As the movie hurtles toward the apocalyptic finale, it all becomes so meaningless - from Albert Dekker’s overly articulate villain, to Mike’s scheme to cash in on whatever he can.

It is a small consolation that Hammer is just less hypocritical than the people around him.

If my previous experiences with the film sound subpar, I remember being underwhelmed by Ralph Meeker on my first viewing - he seemed small, and lacking in charisma. I do not know what I was expecting, but for some reason, he was a block.

Not this time!

 

Meeker is pure venom. With the presence of a thug, or schoolyard bully, he stalks through the film like a predator. He brings a certain low cunning, but his Hammer lives up to his name. He has clear, simple goals (get rich, everyone else be damned).

Visually, he is striking: with his lantern jaw and eyes like the viewing slits in a helmet, he looks like a human tank. That big mouth - either smirking or grimacing - is a major asset as he interrogates his way through witnesses, suspects and anyone else who gets in his way.

The whole movie sets him up as both a traditional gumshoe and an evisceration.

He fights his way through the movie, becoming less of a detective and more of a bully.

There are two great scenes showcasing Hammer’s MO: in the first, he alphas his way through a witness’s home, poking around his belongings, drinking his drink, and finally, snapping his prized record.

In a later scene, Hammer runs into the coroner who turns out to be as craven as he is. After rebuffing the coroner’s demand for a bribe, Hammer looks beat - and then he jams the coroner’s hand in his desk.

It is at this point, we get the one emotion we have not seen Mike express: glee.

He seems genuinely excited by the pain he is causing.

 

After following Hammer for the length of the movie, the ending seems inevitable, an exclamation point on his selfish quest.

The only character who is equal in his greed and lack of forethought is Lily (Gaby Rodgers), the Pandora who opens the box and unleashes Armageddon.

The ending is so final, it turns the film into an evisceration of the genre - it is easy to see why so many critics treat it as the endpoint for film noir.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

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Workmates (Curtis Vowell, 2025)

Best friends Lucy (Sophie Henderson) and Tom (Matt Whelan) have been managing their struggling theatre for years. Their lives are tied up in this place.

However, those ties are about to be unwoven.

While Lucy is happy with the status quo, Tom is getting married and looking to move onto a job at another, more upmarket venue. 

When the theatre is threatened with closure, it also threatens to break the bond between Lucy and Tom.

A love letter to local theatre, Workmates got my attention because it is based around Auckland’s Basement theatre, a long-running venue that was formerly managed by the film’s co-writer and star, Sophie Henderson.

I have been visiting the theatre for decades - so long I can remember watching Henderson striding the boards there.

Over ten years ago, I started reviewing shows at the Basement, and I fell even harder for it. In that time, I got to see so many different types of theatre: one-person shows, stand up, workshops, puppetry, improvised dating.

It got to the stage where I would just pick a show based on the title and not read anything ahead of time.

The Basement is a special place and Workmates is a showcase for its particular charms. We only get a few snippets of various performances, but as a portrait of its geography, and atmosphere, it is effective.

From my limited perspective as a patron, the most unrealistic part of the film’s depiction is in a scene where a character attempts to carry his lover up the stairs to the second floor backwards. After spending so many years clambering up and down those slanting steps, this scene verges on fantasy.

So on that level, Workmates is terrific.

As a film, it is a little shakier.

One of the reasons I took so long to post this is because I was struggling to work out how to describe the film.

Tonally, it wants to have its cake and eat it - it wants both broad laughs and darker, messier human drama. 

On the one hand, the film has the farce of keeping the theatre’s lights on, while it also wants to balance Lucy’s crisis of arrested development. 

The film never manages to find a way between these two poles, and Lucy becomes a victim of the film’s tonal dissonance.

The character is afraid of growing up, betraying a childlike belief in ignoring problems that eventually catches up with her.

This is a fairly solid foundation for a character, but the film also wants her to be a screwball-style agent of chaos, which is where it falls apart.

In a bizarre early moment, Lucy intentionally fills a moving car with dry ice. She has been warned about it, and does it anyway, in a petulant attempt at play that plays less like a comic punchline and more like something more dangerous.

This moment colours the rest of her actions: she hides the theatre’s massive safety issues; she is lying about her employment situation.

Henderson’s character is terrifyingly self-centred, in a way that the film seems not quite able to handle. 

The film’s hard segues in tone reach their peak  when the film introduces a subplot involving sexual assault. As a sequence, it works. In the context of the film, it is one more plotline in a film that cannot decide on what it wants to focus on.

It does not help that the comeuppance for this subplot is an accident. 

The performers are good and have an easy rapport.

Despite the film’s scattered approach, Henderson has a grasp on Lucy, managing to navigate through the film’s various hijinks without losing the character’s pathos. The theatre means something to Lucy - it is not just her literal home, but an escape from the problems of the outside world. 

Workmates is more Lucy' s story so Whelan recedes a little - he is a good straight man and brings a quiet integrity to Tom. 

While the performances are solid, the actors seem a shade too old for the characters they are playing. Not to say people can go through significant changes at any time of their lives, but the characters in Workmates feel like they are just starting to grapple with adulthood. 

The film’s greatest success is in evoking the world of a living creative community. It is at its best as a fly on the wall experience as our protagonists struggle with the nuts and bolts of keeping the lights on.

Overall, Workmates is an easy watch. It has ambition in its scope and tone which it cannot quite reach, but the performances, and world it builds, are worth it. 

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you enjoy something I wrote, and want to support my writing, here’s a link for tips!