Carolco. Director Peter Hyams; Producer Jonathan A. Zimbert; Screenplay Peter Hyams; Camera Peter Hyams; Editor James Mitchell; Music Bruce Broughton; Art Director Joel Schiller
Gene Hackman
Anne Archer
James B. Sikking
J.T. Walsh
M. Emmet Walsh
Susan Hogan
Spectacular stunt work and Canadian locations punch up the train thriller Narrow Margin, but feature remake is too cool and remote to grab the viewer. Richard Fleischer's trim 1952 classic for RKO had a negative cost of only $230,000, while the remake logs in at $21 million. That extra bread shows up on screen in impressive production values but filmmaker Peter Hyams fails to make his story involving.
Basic plotline is retained in the new version. In the Charles McGraw role, Gene Hackman plays a deputy d.a. delivering key witness Anne Archer to testify against gangster Harris Yulin. Hackman's teammate, cop M. Emmet Walsh, is killed leaving Hackman and Archer to escape from a helicopter of armed heavies. They flee to a train headed across remote stretches of Canada and have to play cat and mouse with the thugs (led by evil James B. Sikking) who've boarded the train to eliminate them.
Hackman adds panache to a one-dimensional role. Archer is stuck with a nothing part, given barely one monolog to express her character's feelings. Curiously there is no sex or suggestion of romance in the film.
(Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1990. Running time: 97 MIN.
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