Rent Trespass (1992)

Taut - Trespass review by sb

FILM & REVIEW Another cracking taut Walter Hill movie - Paxton and Sadler play Vince and Don two fireman who discover a map and some old newspaper clippings about a church that was robbed 40 years earlier. From the info they work out it is in hidden in an old disused factory in East St Louis - all they have to do is find the treasure and they are rich. Except - the same venue is set for a confrontation between 2 rival drug gangs and the two fireman witness one gang leader KJ (Ice- T) kill the other . They can’t leave any witnesses and in the initial melee KJ’s younger brother is taken hostage and a full on siege is set in place. The whole thing takes place in the warehouse with crumbling walls and staircases with a real sense of claustrophobia as each side tries to outsmart the other. Vince and Don find an old man (Evans) who lives there and reluctantly agrees to help them. On the one hand the gang are straight out of Yo Mutherfucker central casting athough Ice-T (augmented by his rival Ice-Cube) do add some heft to the roles. It doesn’t have an ounce of fat in it with some really spectacular action scenes - unfortunately it came out just after the LA riots so the studio took fright and scaled back the release which is a shame as it’s another fine entry in the Hill canon - 4/5

Gold, Greed and Very Bad Decisions - Trespass review by griggs

Walter Hill doing what Walter Hill does best: two greedy white guys stumble somewhere they absolutely shouldn’t be, and the film spends the rest of its runtime making them regret it. Bill Paxton and William Sadler are the Arkansas firemen chasing hidden gold through an abandoned East St. Louis factory — essentially The Treasure of the Sierra Madre relocated to the urban ruins of Illinois. Ice-T and Ice Cube are the gang members who catch them at it, and the performances — Ice-T especially — give the material more bite than expected.

Trespass eventually runs thin, cycling through the same standoff beats until the walls feel repetitive rather than claustrophobic. It doesn’t help that our “heroes” are idiots chasing gold, which makes picking a side feel like a fool’s errand. Huston did all this with more dignity and actual mountains.

Still, Hill knows how to work a confined space, and this stays tense enough to justify itself. Solid Saturday night fare. Just don’t expect to remember it by Sunday.