Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

In the Line of Duty: Hunt For Justice (1994, directed by Dick Lowry)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When New Jersey State Trooper Philip Lomonaco (Dan Lauria) pulls over a car for having mud on its license plate, he doesn’t know that the car is being driven by two members of the United Freedom Front, a group of left-wing revolutionaries.  While Lomonaco talks to Tom Manning (Miguel Ferrer), Dickie Williams (Dell Yount) opens fire.  Lomanaco is killed and Tom and Dickie flee to their safehouse in New England.  While the United Freedom Front plots their next series of bombings and bank robberies, Lomonaco’s ex-partner (Nicholas Turturro) teams up with an FBI agent (Adam Arkin) to track down the terrorists and get justice for his fallen friend.

Hunt For Justice was the ninth of NBC’s In The Line of Duty films.  The previous films featured religious cults, anti-tax protestors, drug lords, and mobsters.  In this one, the antagonists are all former 60s radicals who are still trying to overthrow the system.  The FBI views the United Freedom Front as being a threat to national security while Lomonaco’s partner just wants to make sure that Lomonaco’s death won’t go unpunished.  Dan Lauria was actually a mainstay of the In The Line of Duty films, appearing previously in A Cop for the Killing and and Ambush in Waco.  (Nicholas Turturro was previously featured, on the other side of the law, in Mob Justice.)  Since most people who watch this film will probably remember Lauria as being Kevin Arnold’s father in The Wonder Years, everyone will want his killers to be brought to justice.

As with the previous In The Line of Duty movies, the action is evenly divided between law enforcement and the criminals that they’re pursuing.  At first, Miguel Ferrer seems like odd-casting as a leftist who admires Che Guevara but he gives a good performance as someone who regrets some of the decisions that he made in the past but who knows that he can’t change them now.  Melissa Leo is also very good as his wife.  Stephen Root and Dean Norris, two other actors who you would not necessarily expect to see playing left-wing revolutionaries, are cast as the other members of the United Freedom Front and Hunt For Justice does a good job of contrasting their middle class lifestyles with their revolutionary rhetoric.  One of the ironies of the film is that the revolutionaries are leading much more comfortable and financially-stable lives than the men who are trying to hunt them down.  In fact, the main problem with the movie is that the revolutionaries are so interesting that it’s always a letdown when the action shifts over to Turturro and Arkin, whose characters are far less interesting.  Arkin and Turturro go through the expected paces.  The FBI doesn’t like it when local cops try to interfere with their investigations.  Who knew?

Hunt for Justice is a pretty standard In The Line of Duty movie but no movie featuring Miguel Ferrer, Melissa Leo, and Stephen Root is ever going to be a total loss.  The cast is the best thing that Hunt For Justice has going for it.

Music Video of the Day: Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone by Cinderella (1988, directed by Nick Morris)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Watch out!  Cinderella’s in a sensitive mood.

Best known for being discovered and initially promoted by Bon Jovi, Cinderella had their biggest hit with Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone.  This song made it up to number 12 on the charts in 1986, proving that there was a market of listeners who were eager for overly sensitive hair metal.

The video was shot at Mono Lake, a California lake that is well-known for the large amount of salt that has accumulated in the water.  (It has to be known for something, I guess.)  This video was directed by Nick Morris, who also directed the video for Europe’s The Final Countdown.

Enjoy!

In the Line of Duty: The Price of Vengeance (1994, directed by Dick Lowry)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Johnnie Moore (Brent Jennings) is a former limo driver turned criminal mastermind.  The members of his gang look up to him with cult-like admiration.  On his orders, they have been robbing businesses all over town.  Johnnie says that he is a man of God but he has no hesitation when it comes to ordering his men to threaten and sometimes kill any witnesses.  When Detective Tom Williams (Michael Gross) comes to close to finally convincing someone to testify against the gang, Moore orders his assassination.  When the members of his gang fail to get the job done because none of them want to shoot Tom when his family is around, Johnnie does it himself by dressing up as a clown and gunning Tom down in front of Tom’s son.  That was Johnnie’s biggest mistake because now, he’s got Tom’s best friend, Detective Jack Lowe (Dean Stockwell), after him.

After Street Wars, NBC’s next two In The Line of Duty films both focused on FBI sieges.  Both The Siege at Marion and Ambush in Waco featured true stories of the FBI trying to arrest religious fanatics and having to wait out a stand-off.  Ambush in Waco was controversial because it was not only based on the Branch Davidian stand-off but it was actually filmed while the stand-off was still going on.  Perhaps because of the controversy, The Price of Vengeance tells a much simpler and less exploitive story.  Johnnie Moore is a criminal who kills a cop.  Jack Lowe makes it his mission to put him away.  There’s no risk of anyone watching siding with Johnnie Moore like they may have done with David Koresh while watching Ambush in Waco.  Moore kills a man in front of his son and then laughs about it.  Everyone watching is going to want to see him get punished and they are going to cheer on the efforts of law enforcement to make sure the punishment fits the crime.

The Price of Vengeance is a typical police procedural but it has a good cast.  After playing a killer in the first In The Line of Duty movie and the lead FBI man in the third one, Michael Gross is cast as the victim here and he’s so likable that you’ll be angered when he gets gunned down.  Dean Stockwell brings his no-nonsense, down-to-Earth style to the role of Gross’s best friend and Brent Jennings is smug and evil as Johnnie Moore.  Mary Kay Place, Kathleen Robertson, and Justin Garms play the members of Gross’s family and they all do a good job of showing the trauma that they’ve suffered as a result of his murder.  Keep an eye out for Courtney Gains, playing a member of Moore’s criminal crew.  Gains played this same character in a dozen different films.  If you see Courtney Gains in a movie, look out because he’s up to no good!

The Price of Vengeance is a standard 90s cop show.  Nothing about it will take you by surprise but it’s partially redeemed by its cast.

Music Video of the Day: You Think You’re Tough by Ratt (1983, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Before Tawny Kitaen became famous for appearing in Whitesnake videos, she dated Robbin Crosby, the lead guitarist of Ratt.  Those are Kitaen’s legs on the cover of Ratt’s first self-titled album.  Decorating those amazing legs with high heels and rats results in a classic 80s music image.

The video below is for one of the songs from that album, You Think You’re Tough.  You Think You’re Tough was Ratt’s first single and was released with a cover version of Rufus Thomas’s Walking The Dog.  The video keeps things simple, highlighting the band’s musicianship and saying, “These guys can really play!”

Enjoy!

In the Line of Duty: Street War (1992, directed by Dick Lowry)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Street War, the fifth In The Line of Duty movie to be produced by NBC, takes place in Brooklyn.  Raymond Williams (Mario Van Peebles) and Robert Dayton (Michael Boatman) are two uniformed officers trying to keep the peace in the projects.  When Raymond is shot and killed in a stairwell, everyone knows that drug dealer Justice Butler (Courtney B. Vance) was responsible but no one can prove it.

The case is assigned to two detectives, Dan Reilly (Peter Boyle) and Victor Tomasino (Ray Sharkey).  Reilly is a veteran cop who is just a few months away from retirement.  Tomasino is the son of a “made man” who can’t understand why the drug lords in Brooklyn aren’t as interested in keeping the peace as the old Mafiosos were.

When Justice leaves Brooklyn so that he can hide out with his family in South Carolina, Reilly and Dayton follow him down there and discover that people in South Carolina distrust the cops just as much as people in Brooklyn.  Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn, Justice’s second-in-command, Prince (Morris Chestnut), tries to keep an all-out war from breaking out.

Prince and Tomasino take turns narrating the movie.  Prince talks about the reality of trying to restart your life after doing time in prison while Tomasino complains that “the animals” have taken over the city.  (Because this was made for television, “Animals” is Tomasino’s go-to label for anyone he dislikes.  Anyone with any experience with the police will know what word he is actually thinking.)  While Chestnut gives a restrained and thoughtful performance, Ray Sharkey shouts his lines and snarls whenever he’s onscreen.  Though it’s not always evident in this movie, Sharkey started out as a talented actor who played small roles in several independent films before starring in The Idolmaker.  Unfortunately, Sharkey was also a heroin addict whose once promising career was derailed by a series of arrests and jail sentences.  He looks thin and tired in Street Wars and, one year after the film aired, he would die of complications from AIDS.

With Sharkey yelling his lines, it falls on Peter Boyle to play the voice of reason in Street War.  Dan Reilly is a cliché, the weary cop who still wants to make the world a better place and who is just a few days away from retirement.  But Boyle does a good job playing him and brings his own natural gravitas to the movie.

Dick Lowry, who directed the first three In The Line of Duty movies, returns for this one and he keeps the action moving.  Street War is significantly more violent than the previous movies, with even two children getting shot onscreen.  The story itself is a predictable and Tomasino’s casual racism can be hard to take (even if he does eventually called out about it) but, thanks to the performances of Boyle, Boatman, Chestnut, and Vance, Street War is an improvement on Mob Justice and an adequate entry in the series.

Street War would be followed by two movies about FBI sieges, The Siege at Marion and Ambush in Waco.  Since I’ve already reviewed both of those, I will be moving onto In the Line of Duty: The Price of Vengeance tomorrow.

Music Video of the Day: Atlas, Rise! by Metallica (2013, directed by Clark Eddy)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In Atlas, Rise!, Metallica sings about having the weight of the world on your shoulders and refusing to let it hold you down.  No matter how much Atlas has to carry, he will always rise and so will Metallica.

The video keeps things simple, focusing on the band’s skill.  The video was directed by Clark Eddy, who has also directed videos for Sublime, Crash Test Dummies, and Kid Rock.  Most of Eddy’s credits, though, are as an editor.  As an editor, he has worked on videos for Dua Lipa, Rihanna, Destiny’s Child, Iggy Pop, and Pitbull.  That is quite a collection.

Enjoy!

In The Line of Duty: Mob Justice (1991, directed by Peter Markle)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The fourth of NBC’s In The Line of Duty movies, Mob Justice opens with the murder of an undercover DEA agent by a low-level gangster who has just been released from prison.  While the gangster goes into hiding, the DEA mobilizes and starts to make life so difficult for all of the other mobsters in New York that soon, the Mafia is as determined to get justice as law enforcement.

This was the first In The Line Of Duty film not be directed by Dick Lowry.  Lowry’s fast-paced style is missed as Mob Justice takes forever to get going and regularly gets bogged down with scenes lifted from other mafia movies.  The old mobsters talk about the importance of family, play cards in the backroom, and eat big dinners.  Opera blares on the soundtrack when the DEA starts to harass them.  For a movie that is supposed to honor the work and the sacrifice of federal law enforcement, the DEA actually comes across as being thoroughly incompetent in Mob Justice.  A dumb mistake leads to the first murder.  A series of other misjudgments lead to the Mafia dispensing the own type of violent justice before the DEA can arrest their man.

The most interesting thing about Mob Justice is the cast.

The trigger-happy gangster is played by Tony Danza, who I guess was trying to prove himself as a dramatic actor after spending years on Taxi and Who’s The Boss but who still comes across like Tony Micelli having a bad day.  His best friend is played Nicholas Turturro, who later played a straight arrow detective on NYPD Blue.  Frank Vincent and Leonardo Cimino plays the mob bosses who knows that murdering a federal agent is bad for business.

The head of the investigation is played by Ted Levine, who has had a long career but will always be remembered as the killer from The Silence of the Lambs.  Working under him is Dan Lauria, who a generation will instantly recognize as being the long-suffering and frequently angry father from The Wonder Years.  You know that this is a big case is Buffalo Bill and Jack Arnold are working together.  (Dan Lauria actually appeared in several In The Line of Duty films, always playing different characters.)

And finally, the murdered DEA agent is played by none other than Samuel L. Jackson.  It’s never a good thing when the best actor in a movie is killed off after the first fifteen minutes.

The cast is great but Mob Justice is forgettable.  The main problem is that, after Jackson is taken out of the picture, the rest of the movie is just Danza hiding in different apartments while Levine and Lauria annoy Frank Vincent.  Danza’s murderer is never smart nor interesting enough to be a compelling antagonist and there’s never any doubt that, one way or another, he will pay for his stupidity.  There is one memorable scene where Danza freaks out while wearing a blonde wig but otherwise, Mob Justice doesn’t leave much of an impression.

Music Video of the Day: The Wicker Man by Iron Maiden (2012, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In the year 2000, Iron Maiden proved that they still had it with a song based on the movie The Wicker Man.  The song became one of their late career hits, earning the band another Grammy nomination.  This was the first song that the band rehearsed after the return of Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith.  Dickinson later said the song was an attempt to capture the feeling of being on stage and watching the audience chant along to what you’re singing.

This video features the band performing the song live in 2012, in Santiago, Chile.  An earlier video, which was released at the same time as the song and which was directed by Dean Karr, featured the band performing the song on a stage while a fire raged behind them.

Enjoy!

In The Line of Duty: Manhunt in the Dakotas (1991, directed by Dick Lowry)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On February 13th, 1983, a group of U.S. Marshals attempted to arrest a man named Gordon Kahl in North Dakota.  Kahl was an outspoken tax resistor.  He had already served time in Leavenworth for refusing to pay his taxes.  When he was released, he continued to refuse to pay and, in violation of his parole, started to attend meetings of the Posse Comitatus, an organization that refused to recognize the authority of any government above the county level.  Because Kahl was so prominent in anti-government circles, the plan was to make an example out of him by arresting him as he left a Posse Comitatus meeting.  Instead, Kahl,  his son, and an associate opened fire on the U.S. Marshals, killing two of them.  Kahl escaped and, for several months, was the subject of an FBI manhunt.

To make clear, Gordon Kahl was not a good man.  Gordon Kahl was a white supremacist and an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist who was a follower of the Christian Identity movement.  While Kahl’s supporters claimed that Kahl originally fired on the marshals in self-defense, eyewitnesses testified that Kahl personally executed one marshal after he had already been wounded and was no longer a threat.  Gordon Kahl was no hero but, at a time when many farmers were struggling financially and felt helpless as they watched the banks and the government seize their land, many locals did sympathize with him.  The government’s attempt to publicly arrest Kahl and make an example out of him was seen as a classic example of government overreach.  The government was so eager to catch Kahl and Kahl was initially so successful in eluding them that Gordon Kahl became a folk hero.  When Kahl was discovered hiding out in an Arkansas farmhouse, it led to Kahl killing another deputy and the the government firing over a thousand rounds into the house before eventually setting it on fire.  In their effort to capture Gordon Kahl, the government behaved just as destructively as Kahl always said they would.

The hunt for Gordon Kahl served as the basis for the third of NBC’s In The Line of Duty films, Manhunt in the Dakotas.  Rod Steiger played Gordon Kahl.  Michael Gross, fresh off of playing a tax resistor in Tremors, played the FBI agent who headed up the manhunt.  Dick Lowry, director of the previous two installments of In The Line of Duty, returned to direct.

Manhunt in the Dakotas is a fair and even-handed look at the search for Gordon Kahl.  The film doesn’t shy away from Kahl’s racism and his paranoia but, at the same time, it also shows why many people instinctively distrust anyone who says that he’s from the government.  The film shows why so many supported Kahl without supporting Kahl itself.  Gross’s FBI agent may start out as rigid and by-the-book but he quickly learns that’s not the best way to get people to answer his questions.  Having come to understand why the people of the Dakotas don’t trust the government, he can only helplessly watch as the government does everything in its power to make Kahl’s paranoid claims seem plausible.  The FBI agent is determined to bring Gordon Kahl in alive but Kahl would rather be a martyr and it seems that the rest of law enforcement is all too happy to help Kahl achieve that.  Other than a few scenes were he indulges in his tendency to overact, Steiger gives a convincing performance as Kahl and he is well-matched by Michael Gross as the agent who comes to realize that there’s more to enforcing the law than giving orders and threatening to send people to prison.

Manhunt in the Dakotas would be followed by In The Line of Duty: Mob Justice, which I will review tomorrow.

In the Line of Duty: A Cop For The Killing (1990, directed by Dick Lowry)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When an undercover narcotics operation goes wrong, a veteran cop (Charles Haid) is killed.  While the cop’s killer goes on trial, the members of the undercover squad struggle to deal with their feelings about what has happened.  The head of the squad (James Farentino) struggles with how much emotion he can show while still remaining a leader.  As his ex-wife puts it, he’s so busy staying strong for everyone else that he hasn’t been able to deal with his emotions.  Meanwhile, the dead cop’s partner (Steve Weber) has the opposite problem and starts to take dangerous risks on the job.  When it looks like the killer might get a plea deal from the district attorney, both Farentino and Weber are forced to come to terms with Haid’s death and their own feelings of anger and guilt.

In the early 90s, there was several “In the Line of Duty” films made for NBC.  They were all based (often loosely) on true stories and they dealt with members of the law enforcement who died while on the job.  The best known of these was probably Ambush in Waco, which went into production while the Branch Davidian siege was still ongoing.

A Cop For The Killing was the second of the In The Line of Duty films.  Unlike the later films in the series, it didn’t deal with a nationally-known case.  Instead, it just focused on one squad of cops and how the death of a member of the squad effected them.  With its ensemble of familiar television actors and Dick Lowry’s efficient but not particularly splashy direction, it feels more like a pilot than an actual movie.  Even though this film features the cops opening up about their feelings, there’s not much to distinguish it from other cop shows of the period.  If someone digitally replaced Steven Weber with Fred Dryer, it would be easy to mistake A Cop For The Killing for a two-hour episode of Hunter.  As with all of the In The Line of Duty films, there are a few scenes designed to show the comradery of the members of the squad but it again all feels too familiar to be effective.  Before Charles Haid dies, he and Steven Weber hang out at a bar and wrestle.  After Haid dies, Weber hangs out at a strip club that’s safe for prime time.  Judging from 90s television cop shows, undercover detectives were solely responsible for keeping most strip clubs profitable.

The cast is adequate.  Farentino is believable as the emotionally withdrawn commander.  Charles Haid makes the most of his limited screen time.  Tony Plana plays a smug drug lord who smiles even when he’s being booked.  It takes a while to adjust to Steven Weber playing a serious role but his courtroom meltdown is the movie’s highlight.  In The Line of Duty: A Cop For The Killing may not have led to a television series featuring Farentino and Weber taking down the bad guys but it did lead to another In The Line of Duty movie that I will take a look at tomorrow.