Desperate Hours

Plot synopsis:
In Utah, Nancy Breyers (Kelly Lynch) is a defense lawyer who is inexplicably in love with client Michael Bosworth (Mickey Rourke), a sociopathic convict. During a break from a courtroom hearing, Nancy sneaks a gun to Bosworth. After Bosworth snaps a guard's neck, Bosworth and Nancy slip away.
Bosworth tears at Nancy's clothing and leaves her behind, where she will tell authorities Bosworth held her at gunpoint during his escape. He speeds off in a car with his brother Wally (Elias Koteas), and their partner, the hulking, half-witted Albert (David Morse), then changes cars with one Nancy has left for him in a remote location.
In the meantime, decorated Vietnam veteran Tim Cornell (Anthony Hopkins) arrives at his former home with his ex-wife Nora (Mimi Rogers), who have two kids—15-year-old May (Shawnee Smith) and her 8-year-old brother Zack (Danny Gerard). Tim and Nora separated due to his infidelity with a younger woman, and Tim shows up trying to reconcile with Nora, with whom he is still in love.
Needing a hideout until Nancy can catch up with them, the Bosworth brothers and Albert settle on the Cornells' home with a "For Sale" sign which is seemingly picked by Bosworth at random. Somehow, Bosworth picks up intimate details of the Cornells, and one by one all of them find themselves the prisoners of the Bosworth brothers and Albert.
Nancy's innocent act does not fool FBI agent Brenda Chandler (Lindsay Crouse), who puts surveillance on her every move. Nancy eventually cuts a deal with Chandler to have charges against her reduced by betraying Bosworth.
As young Zack tries to escape through a window, a friend of the Cornells who visits the house by chance meets him. Bosworth makes the family friend enter inside by force, and as they discuss, Bosworth shoots him, then makes Albert dispose of the body as Albert gets anxiety-ridden and decides to go off on his own. As Albert leaves while covered in blood, he intercepts two beautiful college girls, who then denounce him with a small gas station owner. The owner calls the authorities who chase after Albert. Albert ignores their order to surrender and is killed by police agents on a river bank.
Nancy begs Agent Chandler to give her a gun, but unbeknownst to Nancy, Chandler removes the bullets. As she goes to the Cornells' house, the house gets surrounded, and as a shootout starts by Bosworth, Wally is fatally wounded in a barrage of FBI bullets and falls on top of a shocked Nancy. Wally's gun is taken away by Tim. Bosworth holds a gun on Nora and is prepared to use it if Tim interferes. He is unaware that Tim has removed the bullets. Tim then drags the criminal outside, where Bosworth ignores the FBI's order to surrender, and is fatally shot.

Tags: violence, neo noir, murder

Review:
This is one of those movies that is very difficult to give a star rating because its high entertainment value is due to the fact that it's almost completely terrible.A remake of the 1955 Humphry Bogart-Fredric March potboiler, DESPERATE HOURS is an unrelentingly bizarre piece of exploitation trash.
Director Michael Cimino and producer Dino De Laurentiis once again prove that they are more capable than anyone else in the film industry of taking a potentially good idea and drowning it in excessiveness.Mickey Rourke and Anthony Hopkins are both excellent actors.
Mimi Rodgers is wooden even during emotionally intense scenes, Shawnee Smith is distraught before the home invaders show up and Lindsay Crouse is both wooden and over-the-top at the same time.Kelly Lynch is the only actor who turns in even an appropriate performance, evoking a sense of hopelessness and panic from the start that makes you feel for her character, even if she has dug her own grave.
Maybe with time, viewers will begin to see the tight, complex thriller struggling to break through the mess that is DESPERATE HOURS.But all this analysis begs the question, would the movie have been more entertaining had it been put together more coherently?
Kelly Lynch's acting directions must have been "look snappy, especially topless, act like you just ingested a gram of cocaine, and all will go well." One of these first years Cimino will put together all the pieces and come up with a really good, coherent film.
A peculiar piece of entertainment, Michael Cimino's Desperate Hours feels rather odd for a number of reasons.
When he goes to another room to talk with his beautiful lawyer Nancy, he steals a gun she has hidden under her skirt (how anything can be hidden under THAT skirt is a mystery) and escapes, joining his brother and another man.Meanwhile, Tim Cornell, a lawyer whose family lives in a nice house, is trying to make peace with his wife Nora after an affair, but she is convinced the marriage is over and she is in the process of selling the house, as the sign out front makes clear.
And the process of finding out what happened to Bosworth is fasscinating.Mickey Rourke does a good job, thoroughly evil in court but calm and almost kind with the family most of the time.
Mickey Rourke plays a criminal who escapes from jail with help from his lawyer (Kelly Lynch).
He decides to hide out in the house of a heavily dysfunctional family (played by Mimi Rogers, Anthony Hopkins and Shawnee Smith).
You have talented actors like Lynch, Rogers and especially Hopkins giving their all time worst performances.
Like the director, the film wants to be taken seriously and yet it's woefully misguided with overwrought acting, leaden direction that rarely makes any sense and a script that's totally outdated and is divorced from logic.
For instance, when David Morse is alone in the wilderness and he's running away from the police, the whole moment is (oddly) directed with reverence but then, as Morse is heading towards a gas station, he meets two buxom bimbos who are dressed in such ridiculous clothes (they look like they just stepped out of a Playboy spread) that the director's attempt at reverence is destroyed by the unexpected sight of those two women who just didn't belong in the movie.
But topping everything, even the dreadful music or scenery chewing from Mickey Rourke or Anthony Hopkins, is Lindsay Crouse's performance, which can only be described as being out of this world.
Personally speaking, Lindsay Crouse's acting in DH ranks up there as one of the weirdest performances ever put on screen.I haven't seen the original version of DESPERATE HOURS but I can't imagine it's remotely close to being as dreadful as Michael Cimino's version..
Why?Here's a good example."Desperate Hours" is a remake of a similar movie which starred Humphrey Bogart.
Wish I could say the same about the remake.Rourke plays the mad dog killer this time out, who is on the lam with his attorney (Lynch, who should probably sue Cimino for defamation of character) and holes up with his cronies in the house of a distant man (Hopkins) and his equally distant family.
Seeing 'Sin City' brought me back (great role, great acting, great film!), so I picked up 'Desperate Hours' and watched it last night.
While the supporting characters could have been better written (Kelly Lynch & Mimi Rogers' characters fell flat), the scenes between Rourke & Anthony Hopkins were wonderful!
Like another reviewer I was reminded of Humphrey Bogart's 'Duke Mantee' in the 1936 film 'Petrified Forest', but Rourke's 'Michael Bosworth' was a little more homicidal and more of a loose cannon.
If you like Rourke & Hopkins, you will enjoy watching 'Desperate Hours.'.
Mickey Rourke avoids going to trial and holds Anthony Hopkins, Mimi Rogers and their family hostage in this amazingly dull motion picture.
But Desperate Hours is like a High School film project - only worse.It is terribly put together with jump cuts, poor camera angles and perspective, terrible continuity, poor story, time-frame mismanagement, unbelievable plot holes and poor characters.The action sequences are a joke too.
Like count the number of piles in my living room carpet.Bottom line: Desperate Hours is one of those movies that's so bad it becomes an unintentional comedy..
Michael Cimino directed this story of a blood-thirsty gang raiding an upper class suburb house on their run from the police after a series of ambitious big projects like "Heaven's Gate", "Year of the Dragon" and "The Sicilian" in the eighties.In this remake, it is Mickey Rourke's turn to play Bogart's leading role, and he turned Bogart's coolness into a portrait of a psychopathic gentleman gangster whose violent dominance is about to erupt like a volcano every second.
Both men are fighting against each other in every possible way, starting with psycho duels and witty conversations to hard fights and pure wars of nerves.Most of the plot takes place in Hopkins' house, and as soon as the story is settled out of this apparent suburb paradise hell breaks out, starting from Rourke's violent escape from a courthouse prison in the beginning of the film to the final showdown when the police arrives.Cimino's direction works well with his whole ensemble often placed in the living room like actors on a static theater stage, and the camera views the psychological warfare often from a very distant ankle like in a documentary.
The great cast of all actors featuring Mimi Rodgers, Kelly Lynch, Elias Koteas and David Morse and the minimal and seducing sound track score by David Mansfield add much tension to this well-dome remake of a great fifties crime drama..
This mediocre movie is a 100-minute snorefest about a bad dude (played by Mickey Rourke, who contributes nothing to the role), who kidnaps a upper-middle-class family.
Most of the other actors do good to very good jobs, notably Michael Morse who plays one of Rourke's cronies, and Anthony Hopkins in a role which is far beneath him.
Since we already know that the script can be done well, there is no one to blame here except Michael Cimino for the non-direction this movie took.
For example the playing of the Red River valley and so sort of ploy to make the audience feel sorry for the creep the the cops shot in the river.By the way, the best cinema was not the movie, rather the Nature scenes with the wild horses.Everything about this sad flick tells me its director and the actors have finished their careers.Just terrible, so if you want awful, get this as a 2.00 DVD and laugh at it, that's all its good for..
STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All CostsThis film was kind of dogged from the beginning in my opinion,as I was subconsciously aware that it was a remake of what could very well be a much superior film,albeit one that was well before my time (then again,so was Citizen Kane.)Well,having watched it,all I can hope is that it wasn't an imitation of what a poor film it already was.Mickey Rourke can play the smooth,menacing villain role practically in his sleep and Anthony Hopkins is always a reliable,if rather overly smug,leading man and both actors are given surprising sparkle and snazzy lines by the script.Sadly,none of this can make the film any less of an uninvolving,uncredible and deadly dull affair than it already is despite this couple of virtues.Michael Cimino directed the lengthy but thoroughly absorbing The Deer Hunter,a drama which sure had more thrills than this 'thriller' has.*.
Actor/actress are bads, image is bad, music is bad and more the story is idiot.This movie show that even if they are potentially good actor they can act bad when they are not directed correctly.
Sadly, we are yet again left trapped between a conscientious artist trying to feed us caviar while the studio chew up some cardboard and spit it out:'According to some official sources, Michael Cimino's original cut of Desperate Hours was mutilated by the film's producers, resulting in a very badly edited film filled with plot holes.
The only known proof of any deleted scenes are some stills which seemingly show a few of them.'It's sad to think Cimino didn't have the chance to re-cut this film like with Heaven's Gate.
We'll tell the press!'For years I had avoided watching Desperate Hours based on the reviews; but if you are a fan of Cimino, it is easy to see past the choppy edits and plot holes.
Lawyer Nancy Breyers (Kelly Lynch) is defending robber and murderer Michael Bosworth (Mickey Rourke) for killing a guard in prison.
He makes contact with Nancy as he waits for her to join them.Director Michael Cimino remakes the 1955 film.
This is the first Mickey Rourke movie I've seen, and he makes an effective criminal.
Rourke overacts his way through the role originated by Bogie in this standard thriller with no real punch or exciting moment.
Michael Cimino's Desperate Hours, despite only really being a serviceable home invasion/hostage thriller, still has a lot of fun with it's two leads, brash sociopath Mickey Rourke and even brasher estranged family man Anthony Hopkins.
Based on a creaky old Humphrey Bogart film, Cimino obviously vamps up the violence and eroticism that simmers beneath it quite a bit, and when you have Rourke as your antagonist you know it's not going to be anywhere near a relaxed affair.
Following a court trial, convicted killer Michael Bosworth (Rourke, very good) absconds with two accomplices, one his ex con brother, Elias Koteas who doesn't have much to do in the film, and his childhood friend, ex con Albert, David Morse as we've never seen him before, a slow, fiesty, idiot of low intellect.
But we have another smart cookie, Crouse, the best performance in the film, as the defiant and bulldogged female FBI agent, heading her team of cops, sharpshooters, baiting Rourke by using his defence attorney/girlfriend, (Lynch, never looking hotter).
The film relies on the interaction of characters, and I must say, I found this best, in the small exchange of hateful dialogue, between daughter (Smith) and Rourke.
Cimino is good director, and I don't think that he made a bad movie.
He was mostly not allowed to present his movies, as he wanted them to be, and the flickers of his talent just sparkle through the studio assembled films he made, visible to those who look for them, understanding visual poetry preserved in exterior scenery, his director's trademark.I haven't seen the original, but "Desperate Hours" of 1990 is no worse than any far better rated crime or thriller movies that were hailed as a "box office hit".
It is hard to understand today, that Mickey Rourke was a unique kind of character actor back in the 80's, but we have filmed proof, one of which is Cimino's very own "Year of the dragon".This is a good solid film that didn't age at all, but preserved it's qualities, beautiful cinematography, fierce acting performances, intensity and atmosphere, 26 years on, looking and feeling as good today, as when I first saw it.
Hopkins, Morse, Koteas, Rogers all provide EXCELLENT support, but this is a Rourke show and Cimino's cinematography never fails to let us know it.
Michael Cimino sunk a studio with his turkey "Heaven's Gate", but he is still a masterful director of action movies when he's in top form (witness Deerhunter, Year of The Dragon and now, Desperate Hours).
Cimino adds all the right touches in his update to the 50's original: Lynch's ice-queen trial lawyer, Hopkins-Rogers' marriage on the rocks, Smith's rebellious teen, Koteas' emotionally stunted younger brother.
The point that really drove it home for me was the bravado "a false showing of bravery" at the end of this flick on the face of both Anthony Hopkins and that detective lady this movie has left a ill feeling in me that will no doubt last for day's to come.
This movie asks the question: Can a film be good and bad at the same time?Take the acting for example.
Hopkins and Rourke are both good, capable actors but here it's like they're fighting it out for title of Cinema's Biggest Ham. What's really weird is that they alternate between good acting and bad several times during the film, even during the same scene.
I'm still not sure.But to answer the question " Can a film be good and bad at the same time?" According to this movie-Yes.
Film-maker Michael Cimino would team up with Mickey Rourke again, after the crime epic "Year of the Dragon" five years earlier.
Here's a glum siege movie (although its more like tedious house-sitting) that never feels all that threatening despite the best efforts by a smooth talking psycho Mickey Rourke and an neurotically edgy David Morse as some criminals that take a family hostage in their home.
They could have remade this movie by digging up Bogart's and March's bones and propping them up and they would have done a better acting job that Rourke/Hopkins.
It's an entertaining thriller,with good performances (except an overacted Rourke),and nice music by David Mansfield.But there is no doubt that Cimino have better films than this,like "Year of the dragon" or "The deer hunter"..
Anthony Hopkins is pretty good as the husband desperate to save his family, but he's not at his best.
An exciting psychotic film directed by Michael Cimino, with great suspenseful acting by Michael Rourke, Anthony Hopkins, Mimi Rogers and Linda Crouse.
As a die hard Anthony Hopkins fan I decided to buy this and add it to my collection of his movies - unfortunatly the only thing good about this film was Anthony.
In fact, it wasn't fair to cast such a brilliant actor as Sir Hopkins in this sort of movie, as you don't see just how good he actually is - watch Silence of the lambs instead.
This is an electrifying remake that proves Cimino could still direct action films like no other.
The famous synergy between the director and Mickey Rourke is in full supply, while Hopkins and Rogers sympathetically act out a disintegrating marriage amidst the terror of being taken hostage with their 2 kids.
Worst of all the ending was so bad, it seemed like the films writer had a good idea up to that point, and then he just decided to kill off the bad guy, so that the audience would cheer for the police, who probably had a fun time pumping him full of hot lead as he knelt down, unarmed, ready to be arrested.
The action starts off impressively and its lively pace is maintained throughout the entire film.Michael Bosworth (Mickey Rourke) is a convict who escapes from a courthouse with the help of his defence lawyer and lover, Nancy Breyers (Kelly Lynch) who'd smuggled a gun into the building for him.
Bosworth's character is also a problem because, as a man with an exceptionally high I.Q., he never does or says anything that's even remotely intelligent let alone brilliant.Mickey Rourke provides the movie's best performance as he conveys his character's unusual combination of charm and volatility so well and although it is generally entertaining, "Desperate Hours" never achieves the intensity or impact of the 1955 original..
The cast seems solid, we have Anthony Hopkins, Mickey Rourke,and Kelly Lynch.
In reality, DESPERATE HOURS (1990), a remake of the classic Humphrey Bogart-Fredric March film of the 50s, is a BAD movie, but still watchable due to it's badness!
It boasts a talented cast of actors (Anthony Hopkins, Mickey Rourke, Lindsay Crouse, Mimi Rogers, David Morse, Kelly Lynch, Elias Koteas), all of whom had either had been in,or were about to be in, acclaimed works.It came out a year before Hopkins would do "Silence of the Lambs (1991)", for which he would take home the Best Actor Oscar, and go on to do several more acclaimed films in the 90s, receiving Oscar noms for most of them.
And to top it all off, "Desperate Hours" was directed by an Oscar-winning director, Michael Cimino (of "The Deer Hunter" fame).
By having it's own unique style and not conforming to either decade, it actually makes the movie look kind of fresh when one watches it over 20 years later, as the focus is more on the beautiful scenery and setting, especially that huge mansion, than anything else.I know that a kidnapping-hostage situation SHOULD BE intense, but the actors' performances seem more like histrionics and hyperventilating acting than natural reactions to events.
I know it's wrong to laugh in a movie like this, but it's hard to avoid when the dialog and characters are so odd and weird.
And it's really all of this bad acting that makes the movie work.
Anyway, in the end the only thing audiences will get out of the movie is some explanation as to why Michael Cimino's career never really recovered after "Heaven's Gate".