Desperate Hours

Michael Cimino's Desperate Hours is an attempt to take a 1950s crime classic and remake it by turning up the heat, but Cimino has set the heat too high, and the result is an overwrought melodrama with dialogue even a True Detective editor would question. Read full review

Rourke is, in fact, exceedingly creepy. There's an unpredictable, resonant menace in his eccentricity. But Cimino can't connect the movie's thriller elements to its themes. We end up spending way too much time indoors while this thug waves a gun at these poor innocents. Read full review

This remake of The Desperate Hours, the 1955 Humphrey Bogart criminal-on-the-lam suspenser, is crisp and atmospheric - and doggedly ordinary. [05 Oct 1990, p.46p]

However poorly the material has aged, Cimino has not come close to tapping its potential. [05 Oct 1990, p.D]

For all its improbability and rigorous emotion, Desperate does have its moments of quiet suspense and tension. Cimino often gets good performances and does so here. But when it's all over, nothing really unexpected has happened, and it has taken a lot of unpleasant moments to get through the desperate hours. [11 Oct 1990, p.C09]

With the prospect of more films like it in his future, Rourke’s decision to walk away from Hollywood while his star was still on the ascendant makes a lot more sense. Read full review

Despite the usually dependable cast, this is a slow and ever-so-slightly dull affair. Try Bogart's 1955 original instead. Read full review

Desperate Hours is a coldly mechanical and uninvolving remake of the 1955 Bogart pic The Desperate Hours, with Mickey Rourke as the hood terrorizing a suburban family. Read full review

Not desperate, but disappointingly ordinary. Read full review