Two firemen, Vince (Bill Paxton) and Don (William Sadler) have stumbled on a map leading to a stolen cache of gold. The gold is stashed in a rundown industrial area that happens to be the stomping grounds of a gang led by King James (Ice T).
When the gang run into the firemen, they are forced into a standoff.
Who will survive? And will anyone get away with the gold?
I used to get this movie mixed up with Judgement Night - yuppies/suburban white guys in an urban setting, having to fight their way out.
Trespass is closer to a siege thriller than a chase movie. It is largely set in one building in an industrial park.
Like Treasure of the Sierra Madre, as characters become aware of the gold, they turn on each other. Vince and Don, the two firefighters, start out as best friends, but the lure of the gold turns Don into a deranged killer. As the siege intensifies, the gangsters’ own personal conflicts are exacerbated, and various internal time-bombs are set between the characters.
Ironically, the one character who is the least affected by the gold is Ice T’s King James. In any other movie, he would be more of the central antagonist - here, he is almost a bystander.
As the two firemen are pitted against the local gang, an undercurrent of racial tension becomes more foregrounded. The characters are never explicit in their racism, but it runs through their every interaction.
Written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale back in the seventies, the script was ultimately brought to the screen by Walter Hill - his sturdy, no frills craftsmanship is perfect for the pair’s clockwork storytelling, adding a welcome sense of menace and stakes to what could have been a more blackly comic tale of avarice.
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