Undercover cop Jim Raynor (Jason Patric) is a seasoned veteran. His partner, Kristen Cates (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is lacking in experience, but he thinks she's tough enough to work his next case with him: a deep cover assignment to bring down the notoriously hard-to-capture drug lord Gaines (Gregg Allman). While their relationship turns romantic during the assignment, they also turn into junkies, and will have to battle their own addictions if they want to bring down Gaines once and for all.
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Nice effects though.
Absolutely Fantastic
Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
This is by far Jason Patric's best role. Even better than Sleepers and that's saying something. While he is not the best actor and will likely never receive any serious acclaim, he serves this role up realistically. The downward spiral that he slips into as the good cop gone rogue is believable. I came to realize that this could really happen when deep undercover gets too deep. Look for Greg Allman in an amazing performance in a role that was tailor-made just for him. The ultimate gangster/biker/outlaw long before Sons of Anarchy was conceived.
The acting is better than the script or the production design. That's the one positive thing I can say about this film. The theme song is good, too.Everything else about the film is flat-out awful, for being a film done in the laziest way imaginable.I actually lived in the town where this event happened, at the time it was happening, and the film got nearly everything wrong about the people and the location.Mistake #1: The town where this took place was Tyler, back then population around 70,000. I realize that's not a big city, but Tyler wasn't a typical backwoods hick town. I don't know about now, but back then it would have been one of the top locations for millionaires per capita in the country, thanks to the nearby East Texas Oil field. Too many people had too much money for it to be a standard "rural" town. I had classmates who had multi-million dollar trust funds waiting for them when they turned 18 and they drove Porsches and Mercedes Benzes to school. That's how wealthy Tyler was in the late 1970s.Mistake #2 (spoiler alert): The villain played by Greg Allman wasn't a bad guy in real life. He was a little sleazy, yes, but not a criminal. He wasn't evil or murderous at all. He didn't have anything to do with drugs and in fact threw people out of his nightclubs if he found out anybody was using drugs in his club. He never made intimidating gestures or faces at the liar who wrote the book this movie was based on. No, I will not apologize for calling her what she was: A filthy liar. Because that's what she was--and still is.Mistake #3: The nightclubs the guy owned weren't honky-tonks out in the boonies, but typical discos in standard city areas. Not a single one of them had an outdoor picnic area. Two of them were in shopping centers. One of the clubs was a favorite hangout of the nearby junior college and even had a replica of the famous lighted floor from Saturday Night Fever. People wore designer clothes, not drugstore cowboy gear.So you don't see anything that is remotely like how Tyler was in 1978.These are unforgivable mistakes because they were flat-out lazy mistakes. When this film was made, many of the actual locations were still accessible as they had more or less been in the 70s, and locals had fresh memories about what had happened. It certainly affected enough of them for the producers to be able to find plenty of them who would talk about their experiences. It wouldn't have killed the people behind the film to go to Tyler, look over the locations, and talk to some of the people who lived there then to make it at least a little authentic--rather than running on their bigoted assumptions about how everything must have been. Did they think nobody would notice the shocking liberties they took with these basic facts?A movie that should have been about police taking disgusting liberties with the freedom of other people for their own selfish reasons became instead a complete joke to the people who actually lived this film. That isn't simply lazy film-making. It's downright disrespectful.They're lucky that Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sam Elliott and Eric Clapton's theme song were so good. If it weren't for them, I would give this utter trash zero stars instead of three.
As an ex-addict (who am I a fooling, I'll always be an addict for life), this movie plays to exactly how an addict works in life. You will do whatever you have to do to get that high. Whether it be coke, heroin, speed, etc. this movie portrays it perfectly. Once you have done heroin, there is no turning back. Yes, it is that addictive. I'm not a big coke fan, but Meth (Speed)is damned addictive and good luck getting off of it once you have started. This movie portrays this perfectly, as Jennifer J. Leigh is going through the carpet and snorting whatever Meth she has found (I've done the same and it is a terrible thing).The message of this movie is perfectly clear. Do NOT put yourself in the position to get strung out on any of this stuff. It will ruin your life, like it ruined mine.Is there anything better than a shot of heroin? No...There is not. Is there anything better than being high on Meth? No, there is not. STAY AWAY FROM IT ALL OR IT WILL WRECK YOUR LIFE AS IT DID MINE!!!Drugs are a great escape until you find out it is too late and in up in rehab (which I did). Even after rehab I went back to using. Yep....It is that hard a habit to break.I am in a Methadone clinic now, but getting close to getting out.Bottom line? Don't mess with any of this stuff if you want to keep a clean life.God bless.
Todd's review was accurate but as a conservative myself I feel as though the very anti-drug message sent by this movie isn't really a political thing, it's a common sense thing and it has never been conservatives trying to censor American from the realisms we face in society I think I remember the liberal agenda around this time being to put warning labels on everything, so I agree that our society was changing as a whole on what was put on the screen but neither party was holding movies like this one back I feel that conservatives as a whole would like the adult to make a decision on what they want to see or if they see it and the left would like the Government to make everyones decisions for them. Just a thought and very very good acting in this one