The Ace Black Movie Blog

Showing posts with label Powers Boothe. Show all posts

Sunday, 7 June 2026

Movie Review: Extreme Prejudice (1987)

Genre: Modern Western

Director: Walter Hill

Starring: Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Michael Ironside, Maria Conchita Alonso, Rip Torn

Running Time: 104 minutes

Synopsis: Jack Benteen (Nick Nolte) is the Texas Ranger in El Paso. Across the border, his childhood friend Cash Bailey (Powers Boothe) is controlling the illegal drug trade, protected by an army of thugs. A shadowy group of ex-soldiers under the command of Major Hackett (Michael Ironside) arrives in town on a bank heist mission. Jack warns Cash to abandon his criminal ways, but instead Cash targets Jack's girlfriend Sarita (Maria Conchita Alonso), leading to violent showdowns.

What Works Well: Director Walter Hill transposes traditional Western fundamentals to a more modern setting, with The Wild Bunch a main source of inspiration. This is an action-packed macho-dominated world of few words and much intimidation, Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, and Michael Ironside forming an uncompromising triangle of good, bad, and ugly. The history of friendship between Jack and Cash adds a layer of regret, and Powers Boothe cuts a dashing villain in a white suit that gets increasingly soiled as his soul surrenders to evil.

What Does Not Work As Well: The emphasis on cool visuals and an elegiac definition of manhood as stripped-down willingness to engage in one-on-one death duels abandons a cluttered plot overstuffed with sweaty characters. The ex-soldiers and their plan to rob a bank consume an inordinate amount of time, and illogical incidents serve as wallpaper to the main objective of staging blood-soaked shoot-outs.

Key Quote:

Cash: You know, Jack. I got a feeling the next time we run into each other, we gonna have a killin'. Just a feeling.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Saturday, 16 May 2026

Movie Review: Southern Comfort (1981)

Genre: Survival Thriller

Director: Walter Hill

Starring: Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe, Fred Ward, Peter Coyote, T.K. Carter, Brion James

Running Time: 105 minutes

Synopsis: It's 1973 in rural Louisiana, and National Guard soldiers led by Staff Sergeant Poole (Peter Coyote) convene for a training exercise in the swamplands. The minimally competent men are armed with blank bullets, and include newcomer Hardin (Power Boothe), the easygoing Spencer (Keith Carradine), and the intense Reece (Fred Ward). Early in their training mission, the guardsmen antagonize Cajun hunters who live in the dense woods, triggering violence. The inexperienced Casper (Les Lannom) is forced to take command, while Hardin and Spencer realize they are being ruthlessly hunted deep in hostile territory.

What Works Well: This powerful metaphor for the Vietnam War drops poorly trained and ill-equipped soldiers into a fog-shrouded forest, and allows the conflict between hubris and locals to unfold with relentless intensity. Director Walter Hill packs plenty of individual personality into the men, while majestic Andrew Laszlo cinematography and Ry Cooder's music score create disorientation in outdoor terrain. The limited visibility, absence of landmarks, and swampy waters spill off the screen, and once the mission unravels, discipline disintegrates and the guardsmen fracture into individuals. Powers Boothe as Hardin and Keith Carradine as Spencer stand out by adhering to personal codes rather than any loyalty to the unit.

What Does Not Work As Well: Once the premise is set, the whittling away of the group proceeds on a linear path, and the you-don't-belong-here anti-war message is none too subtle.

Key Quote:

Sergeant Poole (puzzled by an unexpected body of water): Either this map is wrong, or all of a sudden I can't find my way around the block.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Monday, 23 May 2022

Movie Review: Blue Sky (1994)

An army drama, Blue Sky uneasily mixes Cold War home-front military machinations with a story of a marriage compromised by mental illness and lust.

In 1962, Major Hank Marshall (Tommy Lee Jones) is a nuclear engineer working on the US Army's nuclear bomb testing program in Hawaii. His free-spirited wife Carly (Jessica Lange) suffers from severe mood swings, partially caused by her frustration at abandoning dreams of a Hollywood career to become an army wife. Their teenaged daughters Alex and Becky are used to frequent family relocations, but are exhausted by their mother's erratic behaviour.

Hank's next assignment is in Alabama, where Carly's sensuality scandalizes the army base community and attracts the attention of commander Vince Johnson (Powers Booth). Seeking to seduce Carly, Vince dispatches Hank to witness a nuclear test in Nevada, where Hank is shocked to find civilians exposed to radiation. Upon his return he has to deal with a disintegrating family and an army cover-up.

Filmed in 1991 but shelved until 1994, Blue Sky is a patchy and uneven drama. The restless, sensual, and perhaps bipolar wife provides Jessica Lange the license to thrill, and she does not disappoint with a scintillating performance. The burden her Carly places on a straightlaced military husband is an inviting mix of embarrassing episodes, awkward patience, and marriage-saving restraint. However, the second and third acts unravel in a hurry. Infidelity is quickly followed by a clumsy attempt at redemption, all in the shadow of a poorly defined cover-up and unsteady commentary about military hawks.

The title refers to the invisible hazards of radiation, but the debate about nuclear testing is limited to Marshall supporting the switch to underground tests while the establishment is gung-ho about protocols and unconcerned when civilians are exposed to danger. The topic is too serious to be consigned to the background of a libido-driven drama, and director Tony Richardson never finds the right balance between Carly's frolics and Cold War-driven tensions.

The script by Rama Laurie Stagner, Arlene Sarner and Jerry Leichtling is more at home within family dynamics, and supplements Carly's frequently unhinged behaviour with decent representations of a military family's life of continuous relocation. A unique type of love does glue Marshall and Carly together, while daughters Alex (Amy Locane) and Becky (Anna Klemp) provide a human face to the required resiliency of military kids. They confront their mother's mood swings with the pragmatism of rapidly evolving self-sufficiency.

Without ever quite achieving clarity of purpose, Blue Sky combines choppy patches with bright intervals.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.