What could have been

Love Walter Hill. I consider him a filmmaking deity, a master craftsman whose intelligent action films were the exception to the big, dumb fare that saturated the market at the time. In the late 70s/early 80s, only John Carpenter could claim to be Hill's equal.

Depending on who you talk to, Extreme Prejudice either marked the end of Hill's creative epoch, or the beginning of the lackluster second chapter of his career. I fall into the latter camp. Extreme Prejudice is rife with promise, but it squanders its potential on a ridiculous, distracting tangent involving mercenaries planning the takedown of a ruthless narcotics kingpin.

This movie should have been a pissing contest between two badasses, the grizzled Nolte and his best friend-turned adversary, the flamboyant Boothe. The two he-men, one a Texas Ranger and the other a cocaine peddler, face each other atop a cross-borders power-keg. This is a fertile premise, but one that is never fully exploited because of the time spent with these plotting commandos. Extreme Prejudice features a macho cast, but the mercenary subplot that fails to cohere with the main storyline is diverting and pointless. Hill and his screenwriters (working from a story by none other than John Milius) should have jettisoned it and instead opted to explore the nebulous web that is the southwestern drug trade while using the animus between its main characters as a microcosm.

For me, Hill's reign lasted from 1972 (when he penned the screenplay for The Getaway under the apprenticeship of his idol, Sam Peckinpah) to 1984 (Streets of Fire.) The Peckinpah-inspired Extreme Prejudice has its moments, but it falls flat.

...if that was off, I'd be whoopin' your ass up and down this street. ~ an irate Tarantino