Split SecondNever get on the bad side of a cop surviving on "anxiety, coffee, and chocolate"! Split Second is a sci-fi/horror movie set in a dystopian future (2008!), where global warming has resulted in London being significantly flooded. (It really just looks like it rained a lot, though.) Amidst this soggy, urban backdrop, a bestial serial killer is running around, savagely murdering people--like, tearing their hearts out and eating them. Tough as nails cop Harley Stone (Rutger Hauer)--even his name is tough--is waging a one-man war against the killer for having murdered his partner three years back. But now, Harley's been assigned a new partner to keep an eye on him: "Dick Durkin" (Neil Duncan)--yes, that's his real name. Harley's going to have to catch the killer with this new blood's help, whether he likes it or not.
|
|
The story goes that Split Second started out as an occult psycho thriller that would have been called "Pentagram", set in modern day Los Angeles. Well...apparently a lot changed between then and the time of production. Perhaps that's why the dystopian setting and even the occult references peppered throughout Split Second feel visibly out of place, even unimportant. It's extra fat on a movie with an already light runtime of ninety minutes. So what happens in that hour-and-a-half? For the most part, it's comprised of Harley running around acting crazy, right from the start. It's often unclear just what is going on in Split Second, like when the heavily armed Harley emerges from what is supposed to be London PD's HQ--which looks suspiciously like a warehouse the producers probably scored cheap--and his boss, comically named "Thrasher" (Alun Armstrong), barks orders over the radio to watch out for Det. Stone, as he's "armed and extremely dangerous". So are we to assume that Harley's gone rogue, and that the police will be hunting him? No; so what was the point of this? Frankly, it's just one of many, many tired cop movie clichés and dialogue filler that will make up much of the movie, so fair warning. Let's add to this that Harley Stone is a walking stereotype for the kind of hard-edged cops Arnold Schwarzenegger made famous in the Eighties--and lampshaded in Kindergarten Cop--dressed in black leather, wearing circle round sunglasses (in a perpetually dark city, mind you), and carrying multiple big guns at all times. But I'd like to think that Rutger Hauer took the opportunity to have some fun with the zany dialogue, delivering it with rare deadpan humor. There's something implicitly absurd about him calling a Rottweiler guarding a night club "dickhead" (twice!) after identifying himself--yes, to the dog--as the police. But it doesn't stop there; oh no, we're just getting started. In time, Harley manages to get Dick to see his paranoid point-of-view regarding the murderous menace lurking on the wet streets of London. Subsequently, the overly straight-laced, Oxford-educated comic-relief junior partner--who, reportedly, has "sex every night" and jogs "five miles every morning"--becomes even more unhinged than Harley, demanding "BIG GUNS" to combat the sinister critter that carved the astrological sign for Scorpio into his chest and--uncharacteristically--tied him up in the back of a Jeep with nothing more than a flimsy piece of cloth. Yeah...the nonsense is strong with Split Second.
Don't get me wrong; there are movies that somehow veer into that category of being "so bad, it's good", and Split Second manages to land here on the basis of its ridiculous plot and the overzealous performances by its cast. The movie is, in essence, a proto-SyFy Channel cheapo flick, so your mileage may vary. If grindhouse theaters were still a thing in 1992, one suspects that Split Second would have been quite at home in such an environment. The sets are minimal, and that's putting it generously. The police station where Harley and Dick work looks like a warehouse interior...as does the night club at the beginning of the movie...as does Harley's cluttered apartment (ornamented with, perhaps in a vain bit of wordplay, a multitude of Harley-Davidson paraphernalia). Shootouts are so jittery and confusing that it's almost impossible to see what's going on...as though the director (Tony Maylam) was trying to obfuscate the action to keep the budget down. But for me, the most confusing aspect of Split Second is a needlessly convoluted plot with more red herrings than there are in the North Sea. (Yeah, I know they're techniclaly kippers, but let me have that joke, please.) Harley has a psychic connection with the killer, and only he seems to be around when the murders occur. Savvy viewers will probably conclude that the big twist waiting at the end of Split Second is that Harley is the killer. Wrong, because reasons. Oookay...so let's consider that Harley first comes across the killer while he and his partner, Foster McLaine (Steven Hartley via flashback), are doing...something in a sewer, and Foster disappears beneath the waters; it's only afterward that we glimpse the monster. Add to this that Harley has been having (and continues) an affair with Foster's wife, Michelle (Kim Cattrall, who suffers a hairstyle that does nothing flattering for her), and you have the perfect formula for the killer being Foster out to revenge himself against Harley and Michelle. (Michelle even gets attacked later, after a false alarm where someone unimportant gets killed again.) No, we're not going with that one? Well...let's see what other justifications we have for the killer. Hmm...there's got to be something else in this bag...hang on. Okay, got something. How about the killer is another cop named Paulsen (Pete Postlethwaite, in a role that severely underutilizes his talents), who seems to have an ax to grind with Harley over letting Foster get killed and reports on Harley's reckless behavior. After all, Paulsen often does things which seem to impede Harley's investigation because it involves, y'know, protocol. (Lives are on the line, man! No one's got time for "the rules"!) Yeah, it's not Paulsen. Well, we've always got the occult angle, right? The killer leaves multiple cryptic messages and occult signs written in blood for Harley to find. After a bit of hoodoo exposition by Dick, Split Second seems ready to settle on the killer being a demon, or none other than Satan itself. Dick claims that this has to do with the killer's penchant for eating the organs of its victims--or just taking a bite out of it, it seems. Maybe he spoiled his appetite on cookies before dinner. I've done that. Wait, getting off topic. Anyway, the killer eats hearts because it contains souls, so Satan's the killer, right? But...why would the devil skulk through the sewers and just pick off people here and there? Okay, it's not Satan. (Sorry, SNL Church Lady...wow, that's a dated reference. Moving on.) So all we have left has to do with some idea that the killing beast on the loose--which looks suspiciously like Spider-Man's villain du jour circa 1992, Venom, who was a really big hit with the kids at that time--is some mutated...thing, because it gets the DNA of its victims after attacking them. (DNA was also really big with the kids...er, scientists in 1992.) But don't let this conclusion make you think that you misunderstood all of the multitudinous possibilities hurled at you during Split Second. And keep in mind that all the while, this London is supposed to be flooding due to melting icecaps or something, yet this has absolutely nothing to do with the story...nothing. So, by the end of Split Second, with Dick's forced comical narration to close us out and--for arbitrary reasons--a shootout in the sewer and a speedboat ride on the Thames, nothing makes sense--not even the title. Split Second...I mean, what is that? Maybe a fraction of a second is all the time that anyone not suffering from some form of madness can give this movie before laughing at its own brand of crazy. Yeah, let's run with that.
Recommended for: Fans of generic dystopian sci-fi/horror/cop movies that don't make a lick of sense, probably because by the time it was released, it looked nothing like the movie it was originally written to be. Split Second is utterly bonkers, but as an unintentionally hilarious flick to turn on and laugh at with your buddies, it's got some merit. Some.
Don't get me wrong; there are movies that somehow veer into that category of being "so bad, it's good", and Split Second manages to land here on the basis of its ridiculous plot and the overzealous performances by its cast. The movie is, in essence, a proto-SyFy Channel cheapo flick, so your mileage may vary. If grindhouse theaters were still a thing in 1992, one suspects that Split Second would have been quite at home in such an environment. The sets are minimal, and that's putting it generously. The police station where Harley and Dick work looks like a warehouse interior...as does the night club at the beginning of the movie...as does Harley's cluttered apartment (ornamented with, perhaps in a vain bit of wordplay, a multitude of Harley-Davidson paraphernalia). Shootouts are so jittery and confusing that it's almost impossible to see what's going on...as though the director (Tony Maylam) was trying to obfuscate the action to keep the budget down. But for me, the most confusing aspect of Split Second is a needlessly convoluted plot with more red herrings than there are in the North Sea. (Yeah, I know they're techniclaly kippers, but let me have that joke, please.) Harley has a psychic connection with the killer, and only he seems to be around when the murders occur. Savvy viewers will probably conclude that the big twist waiting at the end of Split Second is that Harley is the killer. Wrong, because reasons. Oookay...so let's consider that Harley first comes across the killer while he and his partner, Foster McLaine (Steven Hartley via flashback), are doing...something in a sewer, and Foster disappears beneath the waters; it's only afterward that we glimpse the monster. Add to this that Harley has been having (and continues) an affair with Foster's wife, Michelle (Kim Cattrall, who suffers a hairstyle that does nothing flattering for her), and you have the perfect formula for the killer being Foster out to revenge himself against Harley and Michelle. (Michelle even gets attacked later, after a false alarm where someone unimportant gets killed again.) No, we're not going with that one? Well...let's see what other justifications we have for the killer. Hmm...there's got to be something else in this bag...hang on. Okay, got something. How about the killer is another cop named Paulsen (Pete Postlethwaite, in a role that severely underutilizes his talents), who seems to have an ax to grind with Harley over letting Foster get killed and reports on Harley's reckless behavior. After all, Paulsen often does things which seem to impede Harley's investigation because it involves, y'know, protocol. (Lives are on the line, man! No one's got time for "the rules"!) Yeah, it's not Paulsen. Well, we've always got the occult angle, right? The killer leaves multiple cryptic messages and occult signs written in blood for Harley to find. After a bit of hoodoo exposition by Dick, Split Second seems ready to settle on the killer being a demon, or none other than Satan itself. Dick claims that this has to do with the killer's penchant for eating the organs of its victims--or just taking a bite out of it, it seems. Maybe he spoiled his appetite on cookies before dinner. I've done that. Wait, getting off topic. Anyway, the killer eats hearts because it contains souls, so Satan's the killer, right? But...why would the devil skulk through the sewers and just pick off people here and there? Okay, it's not Satan. (Sorry, SNL Church Lady...wow, that's a dated reference. Moving on.) So all we have left has to do with some idea that the killing beast on the loose--which looks suspiciously like Spider-Man's villain du jour circa 1992, Venom, who was a really big hit with the kids at that time--is some mutated...thing, because it gets the DNA of its victims after attacking them. (DNA was also really big with the kids...er, scientists in 1992.) But don't let this conclusion make you think that you misunderstood all of the multitudinous possibilities hurled at you during Split Second. And keep in mind that all the while, this London is supposed to be flooding due to melting icecaps or something, yet this has absolutely nothing to do with the story...nothing. So, by the end of Split Second, with Dick's forced comical narration to close us out and--for arbitrary reasons--a shootout in the sewer and a speedboat ride on the Thames, nothing makes sense--not even the title. Split Second...I mean, what is that? Maybe a fraction of a second is all the time that anyone not suffering from some form of madness can give this movie before laughing at its own brand of crazy. Yeah, let's run with that.
Recommended for: Fans of generic dystopian sci-fi/horror/cop movies that don't make a lick of sense, probably because by the time it was released, it looked nothing like the movie it was originally written to be. Split Second is utterly bonkers, but as an unintentionally hilarious flick to turn on and laugh at with your buddies, it's got some merit. Some.