Extreme Prejudice Film Review

[Valorie Carlee]

Thestory elements in "Extreme Prejudice" are so ancient they sound like ad copy: Two strong men, one good, one evil, battle each other for justice - and for the heart of the woman they both love. Walter Hill is the right director for this material. He specializes in male action movies where the characters are all a little taller, leaner, meaner and more obscene than in real life.

Hill doesn't really try to avoid the cliches in a story like this. He simply turns up the juice. Like his "Southern Comfort," "48 Hrs.," and "The Warriors," this is a movie that depends on style, not surprises. He doesn't want to make a different kind of movie; he wants to make a familiar story look better than we've seen it look recently. And yet there is a big surprise in "Extreme Prejudice" in the appearance and character of Nick Nolte.

When last seen, Nolte had successfully overcome his early pretty-boy image and turned into one of the shabbier ruins on the landscape of American leading men. His performance in "Teachers" needed a diagnosis, not a review. But then, about halfway through "Down and Out in Beverly Hills," he underwent some kind of metamorphosis. He shaved off the beard and emerged as a weathered, older, more attractive actor; for the first time, I realized that he had the materials to become a big-league star like Cooper or Gable.

In "Extreme Prejudice," he is working in the Cooper tradition. He is leaner than before, his face chiseled like some Western artifact, and he wears his Texas Ranger hat down on his forehead, so his eyes are always in shadow. He works the border, trying to control the drug trade, and at night he comes home exhausted to the bed of his girl (Maria Conchita Alonso).

She is restless with this arrangement. Her previous lover was Cash Bailey (Powers Boothe), once Nolte's best friend, now a drug baron who controls the flow across the border. Cash moves with immunity back and forth in a fleet of helicopters and offers Alonso more than a Ranger's salary can buy. One day, she packs up and goes to live with him.

Meanwhile, Nolte's territory is invaded by an unofficial, top-secret cadre of American combat veterans who apparently are working for the CIA. Their mission remains murky (they screw up a mysterious bank heist), but they seem to be after Cash, too. That leads to the shootout at Cash's Mexican fortress, not to mention a lot of last-minute switching of sides and loyalties.

What makes the film good are Hill's style and the acting. Everything is cranked up about 10 degrees. Nolte is quiet and tough, Boothe gives a great performance as a slimy drug merchant with some residual charm and Alonso was born for her role as the passionate senorita trapped between two men who will kill for her.

The love triangle is sort of a broad, bloody version of "The Third Man," where Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten were childhood friends who ended up on opposite sides of the law and in love with Alida Valli. The conflict in these triangles is always the same: The woman knows the bad guy is a slimy snake, but she loves him, anyway. That breaks the good guy's heart and leaves him free to kill his childhood buddy. Then you get the poignant ending.

Hill has made a lot of movies in the last 15 years, and I guess it's too late to hope that he'll develop a real interest in his female characters. They're the pawns of his male buddies, and everything else boils down to the way the characters walk, the way they look at each other, the personal tics they develop and the new ways the stunt men find for people to die. "Extreme Prejudice" offers a lot of technique, some strong acting, and the absolute confidence of a good director who knows what he wants to do and doesn't care if that limits him.

Comes the dawn and the lesser know special operators have staked out the bank with what would now be less than first generation tactical and spy gear in preparation for a heist. The primaries go in. People are frightened as money is stolen and Safety Deposit Boxes rifled. Hackett confronts the crooked banker and kills him while a faraway barn blows up as a diversion. One of the lesser operators is killed and the getaway is disrupted by Benteen, who locks up William Forsythe at his borderline psycho best as Sgt. Buck Atwater and Matt Mulhern as Declan Coker, their heavy weapons man.

Great review Jack, I love love Extreme Prejudice, I caught it on TV back when I was in 8 or 9th grade and have seen it several times since. I love how you mentioned the homage to Sam Peckinpah, to me this film was sort of a remake/modernized version of The Wild Bunch. Too bad this was little seen by so many people when it opened in theater back in 1987. I was too young to remember why it failed so bad at the box office, I wonder if it was just bad marketing or something. There were so many talents who worked on the film.

Extreme Prejudice is a 1987 American neo-Western action thriller film[3] directed by Walter Hill, from a screenplay by Harry Kleiner and Deric Washburn, from a story by John Milius and Fred Rexer. It stars Nick Nolte and Powers Boothe, with a supporting cast including Michael Ironside, Mara Conchita Alonso, Rip Torn, William Forsythe, and Clancy Brown.

Set in South Texas near the U.S.-Mexico border, the film's plot centers on the conflict between two former friends-turned-rivals, one a Texas Ranger (Nolte) and one a drug trafficker (Boothe), who both become embroiled in a political conspiracy involving a black ops military unit. The film was released by Tri-Star Pictures on April 24, 1987. It received a positive critical response, but was not a financial success.[4]

Extreme Prejudice is an homage, of sorts, to The Wild Bunch, a western directed by Sam Peckinpah, with whom Hill worked on The Getaway. Both films end with a massive gunfight in a Mexican border town. The title originates from "terminate with extreme prejudice", a phrase popularized by Apocalypse Now, also written by Milius.

At the airport in El Paso, Texas, five U.S. Army sergeants meet up with Major Paul Hackett, the leader of the clandestine Zombie Unit who are Sergeants Larry McRose, Buckman Atwater, Charles Biddle, Declan Coker and Luther Fry composed of soldiers reported to be killed in action and on temporary assignment under Hackett for the duration of a secret mission.

Jack Benteen is a tough Texas Ranger. His best friend from high school is Cash Bailey, a former police informer who has crossed into Mexico and became a major drug trafficker. Bailey tries to bribe Benteen to look the other way while sending major drug shipments to the U.S. When Benteen refuses, he is left with a warning by Bailey: Look the other way, or die trying.

Benteen and his friend, Sheriff Hank Pearson (Rip Torn), are ambushed by Bailey's men at a gas station outside of town, and Pearson is killed in the shootout; Benteen realizes Bailey set them up. Hackett and McRose watch the firefight from a distance. Two of Bailey's men who escaped the shootout try to steal their vehicle and are killed.

The Zombie Unit arrives in town tracking Bailey. When they attempt to rob a local bank, the getaway is inadvertently foiled; Fry is killed and Atwater and Coker are caught and detained by Benteen. Benteen discovers the men are listed as dead in all official records and is later confronted at his home by Major Hackett, who tells him they were robbing the bank in order to get Bailey's money and a safety deposit box containing accounts on all the drug money deposited in his name. Now knowing the full story, Benteen teams up with the soldiers and crosses the border into Mexico to track down Bailey and end his drug running. At Bailey's hacienda, they are joined by Benteen's girlfriend Sarita (Mara Conchita Alonso), who was once Bailey's woman and has followed Benteen into Mexico.

At an Independence Day festival, Benteen confronts Bailey while the soldiers prepare to attack Bailey's private army. Hackett, who has given elimination orders for everyone, including Benteen, is caught murdering Bailey's accountant by McRose. It is revealed that there never was a mission, that Hackett is actually Bailey's partner, and that all the other soldiers were assigned to die. At the bar, Atwater warns Benteen about Hacketts orders to be shot on sight and tells Benteen to go for himself. The town erupts into a massive gunfight, with McRose and Biddle going after Hackett as Benteen and Sarita escape in a Jeep. Atwater and Coker are killed while exchanging gunfire with Baileys army. Eventually, Hackett is gunned down by McRose and Biddle, Biddle gets his neck snapped by one of Baileys henchman, Monday who in turn is shot dead by McRose who is shot and killed by Baileys remaining men.

Afterwards, Benteen and Bailey confront each other again in a duel. Benteen pleads with Bailey to surrender, but Bailey refuses, fires at Benteen, and Benteen shoots him to death. Benteen strikes a deal with Bailey's right-hand man, Lupo, allowing him to take over the local drug business in exchange for being allowed to leave Mexico unharmed with Sarita; Lupo advises Benteen to return the favor for him someday, as the two walk off to an uncertain future.

The film was first announced for production in 1976 with Milius to direct from his own script. "It's very complicated", said Milius. "I've never been able to put what the movie's about in a few words. All I can say is it's a modern-day story about subversion and espionage."[8]

He elaborated in a 1976 interview saying it was "about Special Forces. It's a rightwing political thriller, a rightwing Costa-Gavras film. It takes place in Texas and involves the Texas Rangers as well. I shouldn't talk about it."[9] However he did describe one scene:

There's an operation carried out with peak efficiency where four highly trained specialists wipe out forty men. They don't wipe them out in the usual sense, because they're so good and heroic. I wanted to give the sense that these four are more than a match for forty because they're so skilled at what they do: use of explosives, automatic weapons fire, interlocking fields of fire. Their planning is so precise and perfect: they're used to thinking this way. When you come away from this battle, you're not just impressed with their skill, but also with how cold they are. Ruthlessly efficient.[9]

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