DIRECTOR: Michael Cimino

CAST: Anthony Hopkins, Mickey Rourke, Lindsay Crouse, Mimi Rogers, Kelly Lynch, David Morse, Elias Koteas

REVIEW:

Bad movies are a dime a dozen. We generally know what they’re trying to do, they’re just not very good at doing it. Desperate Hours is on a whole other level, a movie not merely incompetent—although it’s that too—but so relentlessly strange that by the end, one is wondering what everyone involved is smoking, and if the proceedings might have been more enjoyable—if not necessarily more coherent—if you’d had some too. A loose remake of a same-named 1955 William Wyler film starring Humphrey Bogart and Fredric March and an earlier Broadway play, both written by Joseph Hayes, it’s purportedly loosely “inspired by real events”, although it also shares plot similarities with the 1951 John Garfield film “He Ran All The Way”. Director Michael Cimino and a script credited to Joseph Hayes, Lawrence Konner, and Mark Rosenthal tries to craft a slow burn suspense thriller, but seemingly have absolutely no idea how to go about it, and the result is an overwrought melodrama with ridiculous dialogue, unintentionally comical overacting, and plot holes you could drive a truck through. Unless one is imbibed enough to find the nonsensical proceedings hilarious, the only Desperate Hours might be the ones endured by the viewer.