In most movies there's a germ of a good idea, and it's the director's job to bring it out as much as possible. Does that happen in 'Deadly Pursuit'? Well, it's debatable.
'Deadly Pursuit' is known through most of the world by the far more generic and unimpressive title 'Shoot To Kill'. It was changed here in the UK in the aftermath of some headline-grabbing shootings and henceforth we knew it as 'Deadly Pursuit'. It's a funny, odd, bizarre mix of a movie which really would sink without the gravitas of its lead actor, the man himself, Sidney Poitier. Poitier is an enigma to me, being as he was for the longest time the living representative of the African race in movies. He was THE African American leading man, and he did it by being tough, straightforward and relentlessly honest on screen. Without him, Will Smith and Denzel Washington couldn't have become actors and progress would have taken decades longer. It's funny that it almost seems that with 'Deadly Pursuit' and 'Sneakers' (an awesome film), he finally let himself do a bit of comedy. Maybe he did lots of comedy that I missed but in his first flush of fame he did a lot of 'issue' movies and that's fatal for me.
In 'Deadly Pursuit', Poitier plays FBI agent Warren Stantin and has become embroiled in the manhunt for a kidnapper who has taken a fortune in diamonds for a ransom and then shot his victim anyway. Warren is almost stereotypically stubborn in his pursuit, a deadly pursuit. Finally, after being boxed in, the kidnapper takes off into the wilderness by replacing a tourist on a hiking trip. Warren recruits his own guide and the pursuit is on.
The core of the movie is in this wilderness pursuit, where the killer (Clancey Brown) has his own captured guide Sarah (Kirstie Alley) while Warren has Sarah's country hermit beau Knox (Tom Berenger) to help him and spark off of in a small scale clash of cultures. That's it, except for the humorous moments. There are some humorous animal incidents involving a horse, a moose and a bear and that's all I'll say. The funny bits are very funny, and really feel weird in this mixed up epic. We start off with murderous urban noir, then outback survivalism with some animal gags, then another set of urban noir and close. It feels very strange. This is a movie that is easily lost in the mass of 1980s cop films, and honestly the casting of Berenger doesn't help, but it does stand out as different. In many ways it pulls its punches and I wish it wouldn't. There's an abortive attempt to make us wonder which of the hikers is the killer, and they're all played by people with experience of playing bad guys, but then they reveal it rather too easily. We could have been tense well into the second hour wondering who the killer was, but that's blown. Also, the cops seem very easily impressed by the killer's smarts at avoiding being shot, but it seems like a duvet over him and his victim would be a common way to avoid sharpshooters.
The production values are good, but it does look cheap in the way that a lot of late 1980s movies looked cheap. The music is steady and does its job. The performances are solid, except maybe for Berenger, and Poiter pulls funny faces to great aplomb. The direction is okay but uninspired although a sense of height is conveyed very well throughout the mountainous scenes. Overall, if you don't mind a few gun deaths and a funny moose scene then you might like this. It's mainly to be watched for Poitier being goofy in a clichéd role.
O.
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