Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Michael Cimino's remake of William Wyler's "The Desperate Hours" (1955) is given the 1990 treatment by increasing the amounts of violence, nudity and strong language and adding colour and a number of beautifully-shot outdoor sequences. The gang leader's character has been significantly changed and as a reflection of the period in which this movie was made, the husband and wife whose home is invaded, have become estranged because of the husband's infidelity. 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. After killing one of the guards whilst making his getaway, Bosworth is picked up by his brother Wally (Elias Koteas) and his friend Albert (David Morse) and together they drive off to a pre-arranged location to switch to a different car which had been left there by Nancy.Nancy's participation in the escape is made to look enforced and Bosworth and his gang decide to hide out in a rich suburban neighbourhood until she can join them. The house they pick is occupied by Nora Cornell (Mimi Rogers) and her two children, 15-year-old May (Shawnee Smith) and 8-year-old Zack (Danny Gerard). Bosworth conducts himself with a combination of politeness and threatening behaviour and when Nora's cheating husband Tim (Anthony Hopkins) calls by to attempt a reconciliation with his wife, he also becomes a hostage.FBI agent Brenda Chandler (Lindsay Crouse) who's in charge of the manhunt, doesn't buy Nancy's story for a minute and has her watched around the clock in the certain belief that she'll eventually lead them to Bosworth. At the Cornell's house, Albert becomes overwhelmed with anxiety and decides to leave but is soon found and killed by the FBI. When Nancy finally decides to co-operate with the FBI so that she can be given a reduced sentence, the authorities are quickly able to close in on Bosworth and bring their mission to its violent conclusion.The most disappointing feature of this movie for anyone who's seen the 1955 version is that the tension, claustrophobia and intensity of threat that the family are under in the original are all so heavily diluted in this version. 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.

Why is it that Hollywood believes that taking an old movie and putting a modern spin on it,is going to make it "even better than the original?"I've seen and reviewed the original Humphry Bogart movie and now that I've seen this version on the "THIS" network last night,it only makes me like Bogie's even more. The original slowly built up it's story and every bit of the action was well timed and gave you that sense of urgency and fear for the family in question. In this one,it's was quite obvious that they were going for more focus on action and a slick look,than they were for acting. Even a great actor like Anthony Hopkins,has his performance diluted by all of this mayhem. His role is okay but really doesn't get interesting until the last 30 minutes or so. The rest of the family pales in comparison to the 1950's version. In that one,they all took a shot at out-witting the bad guys. Nora,the mom/wife,when first confronted by the gang of three is told by one of them,"I found someone's bikini by the pool." She stupidly tells them,"That's my daughter's". Good mom,tell these desperate criminals you have a daughter. The little boy only cries for his mom or dad and only defies Rourke by saying"I'm going to bed". The son in Bogart's,hit,kicked and screamed at them.Their daughter,while crying and emotional over the situation,is otherwise not a very interesting character. Her boyfriend,unlike in the original where he gets clued in, seems to somehow know she needs to be rescued,when really,he knows nothing of what's happening in the house. Rourke's acting does not evoke a sense of fear and urgency like Bogart's did. I realize two different actors,two different styles but Rourke's doesn't even have a "style". All he does is act a little smug,or very angry and even his anger made me laugh. The female lawyer he supposedly "loves" is a pretty thin character but even thinner and worse than that is the female FBI agent. Her performance is without a doubt the worst acting from a female I've ever seen. She spouts her lines like a female auditioning to be The Terminator or maybe making it obvious she's a member of the Jack Webb fan club! ...but ,her lines are so hollow and virtually emotionless ,she'd make Webb sound like Sir Laurence Olivier. The only thing that kept me watching this film was to see the differences between the two films and to get to the anticipated climax. I knew how it would end but I had to see it through.3 stars (and I'm being kind here) for a few good scenes of action and the ending. The end of 2 desperate hours. (END)

Cimino is a hack.There, I said it. Deal with it.So he gets lucky with one film, The Deer Hunter - having great actors like De Niro, Steep and Walken doesn't hurt. 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. For example, one minute you have squads of highly trained and armed professionals who literally can't shoot the bad guys right in front of them with automatic weapons. Then a couple of scenes later said professionals now all have red-dot sights all over bad guys and can shoot with pinpoint accuracy - all in the very same location as the scene before. Stupefying.I could go on and on with the problems in many scenes but I have better things to do. 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.

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. There's virtually nothing "good" about it. The screenplay ranges from scattershot to just plain off-the-wall weird, the performances are some of the most over-the-top ever committed to film and the direction is borderline psychotic. 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. They are also actors who go from mannered to berserk very quickly. Both chew the scenery as if their lives depend on it. 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. This doesn't help a bewildering early scene in which her blouse spontaneously pops open to reveal her bare breasts make any more sense, however.There are a lot of interesting plot and characterization ideas floating around the proceedings but none of them are ever fully developed. It reminds me of Cimino's HEAVEN'S GATE and De Laurentiis's DUNE, two similarly flawed but occasionally brilliant disasters which have grown better with age. 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? The answer is: probably not.