Two-Minute Warning (1976)

Unfairly dismissed by a number of critics, Two Minute Warning is an absorbing contemplation of the phenomenon of violence. Based on a novel by George LaFountaine, the story concerns an anonymous (and, until the very end, faceless) sniper perched above the scoreboard at a championship football game in Los Angeles. His lack of identity and unstated motivation is key to the film's air of cautionary fable, in which the killer's rage is one end of a continuum that includes many different kinds of violence among numerous characters: emotional withdrawal, police brutality, subtle racism, chips on various shoulders. Produced in 1976, the movie has all the hallmarks of the decade's vogue for disaster flicks: an ensemble cast, a web of story lines, and a lot of people contained in one place where something awful happens. But it is also something more: a successful exercise in plastic storytelling, a clever interweaving of a dozen discrete subplots with a mix of documentary and original action footage. The explosiveness of the football game itself becomes a refrain of ritualized mayhem in director Larry Peerce's patchwork film, but without beating us over the head with its metaphorical obviousness. Two Minute Warning may not be a great or classic work, but it is far more than the sum of its many parts and does leave a lasting impression. --Tom Keogh Amazon.com

Not as good as Black Sunday...

Although "Two-Minute Warning" is still an entertaining movie about a "situation" developing, when a madman prepares to shoot people in a stadium, the movie has some holes in it.

I won't spend too many words about its transfer on DVD, which is standard, but could have been taken better care of.

The holes I mentioned before, are mainly referred to the characters involved in this movie.

Except for some very general hints on who they all are, there is practically no "in-depth" character study whatsoever.
All the characters could have been taken form the street and assembled together at random.
We know nothing about them, except for the rather obvious.

The movie at one point, even goes so far, as to almost become a training documentary, or even a promotional spot for the S.W.A.T.

We never get to truly understand who the heck the "madman" is or wants, or for this matter, what triggered him to such an action.
There is no way to either truly sympathize for his own personal ordeal that pushes him to such folly, nor to really hate him for it.

All we get of him, are very general shots form afar, or seen "through his eyes", but we can't even "hear" his thoughts that might go through his mind at that moment.

While in "Dirty Harry", Andrew Robinson, as the Scorpio Killer, made us love to hate him, for all the obvious reasons, and also because we get to "know" him, in this picture, there seems to be no need to get to know the guy and therefore, we cannot decide what to think about it all.

As with the characters played by Charlton Heston and John Cassavetes, two otherwise very talented actors, we absolutely have no true idea from what kind of a background they stem from, and therefore they are just standing there, wooden, watching and studying.

Also, even though we know that the shooter will at one point or another, take aim and shoot some people, the entire process that leads to the final moment in which it happens, is so dragged by the feet, that when it happens, no one is truly surprised nor really concerned with it anymore.

The poor Jack Klugman (the famous Oscar Madison of TVs "The Odd Couple" and "Quincy"), in one of his last roles, is totally wasted here, delivering very shallow lines and almost reprising a role, similar to the one he played in "The Odd Couple", only a bit more dramatic.

Even Martin Balsam ("The Anderson Tapes", "The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three" and "Murder on the Orient Express"), Brock Peters, Gena Rowlands (watch her in "Gloria"), David Janssen, Walter Pidgeon and Beau Bridges don't manage to save the day in this picture.

This is not a movie I can truly recommend, except maybe, just to compare it in scope to "Black Sunday", which is by far more entertaining and original in its development.

These two pictures watched back-to-back, would make for an interesting case study on how to produce, and not to produce a good movie. April 20, 2007

70's DISASTER MOVIE JUST FOR FUN !!!

Dont watch this movie looking for any deep meanings about why people act the way they do. This is an action adventure film that they used to call disaster movies in the 70's. Its fun from beginning to end ! Its a movie where you pop a bucket of popcorn , eat a candy bar ,drink a soda and loose yourself for a couple of hours! Enjoy! I did ! April 19, 2007

Monumentally Bad Universal Disaster Movie

Based on a scan of some reviews here, they might subtitle this movie Lazarus!, or Phoenix!, since it has apparently been raised from the dead on video shelves.

This movie has been largely forgotten and seldom appears on the movie channels precisely because it is and was always seen as a shambles. Footage was borrowed from other films to fill out the production, people wanted their names taken off the picture, it suffered more than one theatrical "final cut," and when it finally was released it was alternatively funny and painful to sit through. I took another look at it for old times' sake and it is truly awful to watch.

The cast is largely out of Universal's own TV stable; the various subplots are cursory, irrelevant and unconvincing; the sniper is never more than sketched and entirely devoid of scare value; the biggest menace appears to be that the guy with a sack of small arms has made one hi-cap magazine for his Remington hunting rifle.

Nothing much other than soap opera happens for the first two acts; and when you finally get to the movie's payoff in act 3, you wait in vain for something to happen -- There's lots of extras running at the behest of some assistant director of crowd control; a relatively few "victims" fall after getting sniped (we assume, since we see not a single memorable bullet hit -- just some of the Universal stunt crew doing falls and such without so much as holes in their overalls) by this supposed disaster-movie-scale sniper threat.

Chuck Heston and John Cassavetes do some running, ladder-climbing, grimacing and manly shouting to no effect; and a few of the TV actors get their personal problems sorted out in corny fashion just before the end credits. Even the ending seems pasted together from outtakes. And, by the way, the entire movie's soundtrack is memorably terrible, even grating.

The sniper's half-hearted spree is thoroughly disappointing -- compacted into a few badly timed moments at the tail end of the decidedly unspectacular, anticlimactic production. Essentially, the movie promises a sniper rampage at the finish, but delivers something faceless and insipid, cobbled together by some scapegoat editor from almost nothing at all.

This may be the worst disaster movie ever made, certainly the worst by a Hollywood major motion picture company. You may even throw your DVD away after you've seen this once. November 21, 2006

Ok but not great 70's Thriller

I actually saw this movie at the theater in 1976. I thought it was an OK movie. It's about a lone sniper perched up in a tower shooting at anyone and everyone at a football game with 91,000 spectatators. Until now I never got to see the original again except for the edited and new scenes added, TV version because the original was not available for sale or rent. The scenes where some of the SWAT men get shot in the head is about the most realistic I've ever seen. I won't get into the gore of that in itself but let me tell you it does look real. One reason for this I think is because of the special effects man - Albert Whitlock. Ever heard of him? He did the effects for the kennel scene in the 82 version of The Thing. The movie can be very irritating after the football game gets started. They show a 10 or 15 second scene of the game and then a few seconds of dialogue between the characters. This goes on back and forth for a good hour of the movie. You can't get into the ball game or the plot with this irritating switching going on. I know they wanted us to "feel" the game but this was overkill. The dialogue is a little odd at times but what do you expect with Charlton Heston and John Cassavettes? The scenes when the sniper starts shooting are the best parts and almost makes up for the other shortcomings. At the end, they corner the sniper up the ladder, old Chuck lets him have it with about 8 shots, and the sniper falls 30 feet onto the cement. They handcuff him, Old Chuck starts shaking him violently and asking him repeatedly "Who sent you, where did you get the gun, you're dying you miserable SOB, so tell me who sent you" PRICELESS!!! I purchased this to add to my growing collection of 70's thrillers. September 25, 2005

A TEDIOUS TWO HOURS

Filmed in 1976, at the closing of the 70s affection for disaster films, TWO MINUTE WARNING never achieves the goal of any good disaster flick: sure you need your big stars in peril, and a tense and involving script. This movie unfortunately falls short in the script department: we never know who the sniper is or why he's doing what he's doing; why does he wait so long to start shooting, and why is Charlton Heston acting like he has a batch of hemorrhoids? The pacing is too tedious and by the time we get some action at the end, it goes by so fast and is staged so haphazardly, it doesn't have much of an impact. There are a lot of good actors wasted in this movie: Gena Rowlands as the floozy live in of car salesman David Janssen; Martin Balsam as the colosseum manager; John Cassavetes as the SWAT leader; Jack Klugman as the stereotypical gambler who might end up dead if LA doesn't win. We also get mediocrity from people like Joe Kapp, Marilyn Hassett, Mitchell Ryan, David Groh, and Walter Pidgeon as a pickpocket of all things. If screenwriter Edward Hume is trying to make a statement about our penchant for violence, he doesn't deliver it too well, and the whole movie looks like a made for TV miniseries without much to recommend it. April 11, 2005

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