This may be worthwhile to rent if you're a Melanie Griffith fan, since she's nude in about 40% of her scenes, but the movie leaves a lot to be desired overall.
Much of the tension is supposed to be derived from Berenger's guilt over the outcome of a boxing match several years earlier, but we never really connect with him in this regard. In fact, Berenger's acting is really sub-par here...worse than "Sniper". The idea of personal redemption is there, it's just not realized.
Jack Scalia does a good job with a thankless part. Billy Dee Williams is handed a role with ridiculous dialog and ultimately looks like an idiot when he reverses himself completely in order to express respect for Berenger's character following the "final conflict".
The assorted character actors do a much better job, but they can't make up for the absence of any logical plot progression and realistic dialog.
Finally, unlike some other reviewers, I don't really have any problem with the fact that we never really understand what motivated the murderer. These sorts of answers usually don't come tied up in neat little packages labeled, "Sexually Abused by Father", or "Sister Died at the Hands of a Drunken Physiscian". In the ORIGINAL version of "Two Minute Warning", we never found out why the sniper went a-sniping, which was, in my opinion, an order of magnitude superior to the butchered version with the sub-plot of the burglary thrown in to make sense of it all for the middle-class viewers.
Not recommended to buy or rent, but it may be worth watching if you see it come on the late show and you can't sleep. By the way, the "uncut" version is not substantially different from the other versions, except for a bit more skin.
Much of the tension is supposed to be derived from Berenger's guilt over the outcome of a boxing match several years earlier, but we never really connect with him in this regard. In fact, Berenger's acting is really sub-par here...worse than "Sniper". The idea of personal redemption is there, it's just not realized.
Jack Scalia does a good job with a thankless part. Billy Dee Williams is handed a role with ridiculous dialog and ultimately looks like an idiot when he reverses himself completely in order to express respect for Berenger's character following the "final conflict".
The assorted character actors do a much better job, but they can't make up for the absence of any logical plot progression and realistic dialog.
Finally, unlike some other reviewers, I don't really have any problem with the fact that we never really understand what motivated the murderer. These sorts of answers usually don't come tied up in neat little packages labeled, "Sexually Abused by Father", or "Sister Died at the Hands of a Drunken Physiscian". In the ORIGINAL version of "Two Minute Warning", we never found out why the sniper went a-sniping, which was, in my opinion, an order of magnitude superior to the butchered version with the sub-plot of the burglary thrown in to make sense of it all for the middle-class viewers.
Not recommended to buy or rent, but it may be worth watching if you see it come on the late show and you can't sleep. By the way, the "uncut" version is not substantially different from the other versions, except for a bit more skin.