Monday, January 25, 2010

36 Hours to Die (1999) (TV)










IMDB

Excellent made-for-TV thriller directed by Yves Simoneau (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, 44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shoot-Out). Don't let the TV label fool you, this movie is truly well-done, tightly scripted, stylishly directed and features a strong ensemble cast. The technical aspects are also very polished. If 36 Hours To Die was to be shown in theaters, I bet nobody could tell it was made for TV.
TV-movies are usually low-budgeted, forgettable stuff but every once in awhile, a gem appears and this is one of those.

Note:
I forgot to put part 9. A thousand apologies to everyone who downloaded. Part 9 is added now.
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Review from Variety:

"36 Hours to Die" feels so much like a Mafioso homage to Quentin Tarantino's eccentric stylings that it's a wonder the filmmakers didn't just go out and get Tarantino to make this TNT Original pic himself. Derivative though it may be, the imitation somehow works pretty well for high-profile scribe Robert Rodat (an Oscar nominee for "Saving Private Ryan") in his crafting a quirky, bizarre crime thriller that wants very badly to be an arthouse feature when it grows up. And while Treat Williams and Kim Cattrall spark a smoldering chemistry, and Carroll O'Connor turns in a deliciously crusty performance, the film is stolen out from under them all by a fellow named Saul Rubinek.

Rubinek expertly embodies the tone-shifting stylings of Rodat's colorfully intense teleplay in portraying a memorably disturbed wacko named Morano. Using every idiosyncratic trick in his repertoire, Rubinek -- whose character-acting credits include such films as "And the Band Played On" and "Nixon," and guest shots on "Frasier," "L.A. Law" and "Hill Street Blues" -- manages to paint us a villain who is at once menacing and pathetic, devious and oblivious, scary and weasly. Note to casting directors: This man should never be out of work.

What Rubinek seems to grasp better than anyone here is that "36 Hours" is warped to the core. Rodat and helmer Yves Simoneau spend the majority of the film twiddling with the audience's brain cells, giving the action and dialogue a firm enough tug to make everything just a little off center. It's a credit to Simoneau's artful instincts, and Rodat's skewed characterizations, that we're never really sure if this is supposed to be a parody of the thriller genre or simply a crime movie filled with nut cases who ran out of lithium.

Williams portrays Noah Stone, a guy consumed with a death wish of unknown origin. He is a brewery owner who is felled by a heart attack as the film opens. Noah's twit of a brother, Frank (Alain Goulem), pitched in during Noah's convalescence by running his business into the hands of organized-crime slime balls who are so nasty that one kills people by stabbing them with a screwdriver. A guy after Joe Pesci's own heart.

Quicker than you can say Gambino family, the bad guys (led by the evil Morano) have managed to take control of the beer biz and have arranged to use it as the linchpin in extorting $120 million. Noah is understandably less than thrilled with all of this, particularly when his sultry wife, Kim (Cattrall), and two kids become sitting targets. He has 36 hours to keep the money from transferring to Morano's slimy paws -- if he can live that long.

It is right about here that Rodat allows the script to start growing increasingly preposterous. For one, it turns out that Noah is, inexplicably, one of the world's only brewery bosses who happens to be an expert marksman.

It must have rubbed off from his uncle, an intense former cop named Jack "Balls" O'Malley (O'Connor). It also clashes with reality that Noah should be such a devoted family man and yet every decision he makes seems designed to place his clan in greater jeopardy.

There is also plenty of incongruously jarring violence scattered throughout "36 Hours," some of it designed to be irreverent and ironic in that "Pulp Fiction"/ "Fargo" kind of way. To be sure, Simoneau allowed director of photography Eric Cayla, production designer Anne Pritchard and music creator Richard Gregoire an unusually free hand, punctuated by mockingly artsy slow-mo and classical opera to boost that Mafia mood.

Tech credits are generally sharp and imaginative.

Camera, Eric Cayla; production designer, Anne Pritchard; editor, Yves Langlois; music, Richard Gregoire; sound, Bruce Carwardine; casting, Vera Miller, Michelle Allen, Clare Walker. Running time: 2 HOURS

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http://tinypaste.com/2937c
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File : 1.62 GB, duration: 1:30:36, type: AVI, 1 audio stream
Video : 1.53 GB, 2431 Kbps, 25.0 fps, 640*480 (4:3), XVID
Audio : 83 MB, 129 Kbps, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, MP3, VBR,

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