Extreme Prejudice (1987).
“Terminate…with extreme prejudice!”
The Stage.
Six soldiers who operate outside of the law descent onto a small town outside of El Paso with a mission - they need to steal some documents from a drug kingpin. Stuck in the middle is a Texas Ranger with childhood ties to the gangster.
The Review.
There’s a scene late in the movie where Nick Nolte and Powers Boothe meet at a dusty bar south of the border and it felt like the perfect microcosm of this film. Everything just feels so dirty and sweaty, the stench of spilled liquor that’s never been wiped up almost emanating from the screen. A place without health codes and regulations, an older, simpler time when lawmen and criminals had genuine respect for each other, but in the end, brute force was the way problems were solved.
Walter Hill took a script that was rewritten time and time again, with directors like John Milius and Jonathan Demme attached at points, and crafted a really fun modern western b-movie in which people still don cowboy hats but traded in their revolvers for machine guns, and pulled together an all-star cast for the gunslinging. Nick Nolte plays Jack Benteen, the only person playing it deadly serious. He’s an old-school Cary Grant, quick-witted but even quicker on the draw. Powers Boothe plays Cash Bailey, a scenery-chewing son of a bitch who normally kills who he can’t buy. He’s got money, a fortress…an empire. And in the middle, we’ve got a small group of soldiers with a mission to rob him, led by the always terrific Michael Ironside. His performance in Scanners would never be topped, but I absolutely loved him in this role. Rounding out the cast is a gang of amazing character actors like Clancy Brown, William Forsythe, Tiny Lister, Rip Torn, and the guy who can’t beat Steven Seagal in a knife fight while he’s on his knees in a bodega in Marked for Death. It’s like a who’s who of late-80’s henchmen.
The script, which started development over 10 years before it was finally filmed, is filled with enough twists and turns that it could easily be made into a 6 episode mini-series in todays climate. Apparently over 45 minutes were cut from the final product, including a lot of the final showdown that I’d love to see. Despite some things feeling jumpy thanks to those cuts and some clear continuity challenges, the story feels pretty straightforward. The real strength in the script is the nuances of the characters. You start to care about some of the bit players, so when someone unexpectedly dies halfway through in one part of the operation, there’s a bit of an emotional sting. It also never falls prey to typical genre tropes. The respect between everyone feels real, and plays into the climax in a major way as we see both an honest attempt at an old West gunslinger showdown and a cap tip from William Forsythe’s Atwater as he delivers a sly word of warning to Benteen between shots of tequila before lead starts flying. It’s no secret that the twists and turns are barreling straight towards a showdown, and when it happens, it does not disappoint. There are clear nods to Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch as we get a massive shootout between all kinds of interested parties in a small Mexican villa.
The End.
I really liked Extreme Prejudice. It moves at a breakneck pace and almost every character feels well realized. The only weak link in the film was the character of Sarita, played by Maria Conchita Alonso. It felt like they shoehorned the character in as some sort of pink link between Benteen and Bailey, but there was no chemistry between any of them and it really didn’t feel like Sarita liked either one. We didn’t need her to make the story work, but without her, there would have been zero female representation in the film. That being said, I still really liked the movie. I could see this as a spiritual prequel to No Country For Old Men, with Jack aging into the role of the jaded Ed Tom Bell.
I was extremely impressed with the disc from Lionsgate’s Vestron line. Although they were unable to source the uncut version (which may not even exist today), the picture looks great, the sound bangs, and the extras are plentiful. We get a feature length commentary by film historians C. Courtney Joyner and Henry Parke, an hour long interview with Walter Hill, twenty-plus minute interviews with Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown, a featurette about the cinematographer, and rounding out the package are a few trailers. For around twelve bucks, this is an amazing value, and if you like fast paced 80’s action films or neo-Westerns, this film is going to be right up your alley.
