Friday, March 23, 2012

Narrow Margin (1990)


Narrow Margin is a by-the-numbers action thriller about a deputy district attorney (Gene Hackman) seeking out and protecting the witness to a mob assassination of her blind date. Because it's directed by Peter Hyams, I expected it to be at least a solid--but not spectacular--film, and it was. Hackman gives a very sharp performance. The dialogue for the most part is well-written, although there is one monologue that the witness gives about half-way through the movie that had me cringing. The story is pretty simple, with a few light curve balls thrown in but nothing groundbreaking. The amount of stunt-work involving the real actors (for example, on top of a moving train with no discernible rear-projection/blue-screen) is impressive. Overall, a fun film to kill the time. It is worthy to note that this film uses the basic standing-on-a-train and making a tall joke before villain gets decapitated by a tunnel setup four years before Speed (1994) did.

6/10

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