Striking Distance

Striking Distance is a solid adventure with just enough edge and mystery. Read full review

Striking Distance opens and closes with a pair of jolting high-speed chases, the first over Pittsburgh streets, the second over the rivers that encircle the city’s center. In between is a lively mystery thriller that hurtles past plot contrivances and unintended laughs to deliver the goods as a satisfying escapist diversion. Like a paperback purchased at an airport just before you board a plane, it serves well its time-killing purpose but isn’t designed to stand up under close scrutiny. Read full review

If Striking Distance were a book, it could be called a good read. Instead, it's a painless watch. Read full review

Willis and Parker are fine in their respective roles, but neither character is given much spark. Willis sulks for most of the picture, grimacing at his enemies and drinking his way through scenes. Read full review

The plot of STRIKING DISTANCE is full of implausibilities, but they're entirely beside the point, since the film delivers what it promises: tough talk, chase scenes by land and by water, plenty of explosions, and pretty girls murdered in nasty and imaginative ways, served up with a dash of sex and a generous helping of knee-jerk cynicism. Read full review

Striking Distance is the kind of movie that Last Action Hero wanted to be: an outrageous cop-movie spoof with equally gratuitous parts of dumbness and decibels. The problem is that, unlike his Planet Hollywood partner Ah-nold, Bruce Willis doesn't seem to know that he's goofing on himself. [17 Sept 1993, p.7B]

Thanks to this flabbergasting howler of a sequence, Striking Distance becomes that rare thing: a movie so bad it's actually pretty good. [17 Sept 1993, p.AE17]

The film's highlight is that rarest of action sequences, the boat-car chase (happily for River Rescue, there's a good highway right by the water!). Striking Distance, which was directed by the aptly named Rowdy Herrington (Road House ), has few other surprises. [18 Sept 1993, p.G5]

Not much sets director (and co-writer) Rowdy Herrington's suspenser apart from other run-of-the-mill efforts in this genre, though a number of supporting players acquit themselves well. And the story's resolution has the ring of unpleasant truth to it. Willis is by now so familiar with characters like the perennially grungy Hardy that he can portray them in his sleep - and at times seems to be doing just that - while Sarah Jessica Parker makes for a fairly lackluster romantic sidekick. [22 Sept 1993, p.E10]

Herrington stages his action efficiently enough - the opening car chase manages to put a couple of spins on a hackneyed cinema staple - but is let down by his own script which seems to have been hanging around in the water so long it's become bloated. Read full review

Columbia apparently dragged the river to come up with the script for this Bruce Willis vehicle -- an OK action movie until it sinks under the weight of implausible plotting and over-the-top direction. Read full review

His unauthorised investigation, with partner Jo Christman (Parker), is a routine affair, the film's familial and professional tensions sunk by a script that's all development and no pay-off. Read full review

Off to a decent start with a bang-bang car chase that takes the life of cop Tom Hardy's father, Striking Distance never recaptures the sense of gritty believability that is essential but rarely found in the cops-and-killers genre. Indeed, it quickly sinks into the usual cliches. [17 Sept 1993]

Striking Distance is an exhausted reassembly of bits and pieces from all the other movies that are more or less exactly like this one. Read full review

There are a lot of other bad things I could talk about -- the overblown score, the silly portrayal of the police, the bad dialogue, the poor lighting in almost every scene -- but I think it's pretty clear how few virtues Striking Distance has. In fact, one of the movie's few positive aspects is that it's too loud to fall asleep during, which is surely what most people would do if their attention was based on story and character. Read full review

This movie is glum, murky, dour, takes place mostly in the dark, doesn't make much sense and has a surprise climax so ridiculous you may watch it with perverse, astonished respect - the kind you might grant the Joint Chiefs of Staff if they showed up for a press conference wearing lampshades on their heads and yodeling. [17 Sept 1993, p.F] Read full review

Striking Distance wants to be a whodunit, a buddy movie, a serial-killer thriller, a romantic drama, a story about one honest cop fighting a corrupt department - and the ultimate car-and-boat chase movie. It is all of these, and so much less. [17 Sept 1993, p.D16]

Bruce Willis is at his most morose in this flat, dankly lit, grindingly inept thriller about a serial killer whose victims all turn out to have been acquaintances of Willis’ rumpled, alcoholic cop hero. As his by-the-book partner, Sarah Jessica Parker is the only one in the movie who doesn’t look sleep-deprived. Read full review

Bruce Willis appears to be one of those actors for whom there is no middle ground. His action films are either "Die Hard" or "Hudson Hawk." His latest, Striking Distance, is a "Hudson Hawk." It should have been called "Striking Out." [17 Sept 1993, p.51]

Its whodunit plot is easily figured out, and its story is a mess. Most surprisingly, its star, Bruce Willis, manages to pull off an entirely uncharismatic performance...Striking Distance passes through boring on its way from indifferent to laughable, with the last 20 minutes the most ridiculous. [17 Sept 1993, p.C1]

Sarah Jessica Parker contributes next to nothing as a work/sack partner who ends up imperiled by a sadist fixated on Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs. The director/co-writer is Rowdy Herrington, who has now surpassed what was his most ludicrous claim to fame: Putting Brian Dennehy into a boxing ring with teen James Marshall in Gladiator. [17 Sept 1993, p.4D]

This is ugly. [20 Sept 1993, p.D2]

An incoherent mess of a movie with a neat boat chase near the end. [21 Sept 1993]

An ugly, unbelievable thriller, Striking Distance is a lame excuse for a few loosely connected chase scenes, full of macho piggishness, glaring inconsistencies and yawning plot-holes. Read full review

This is pop pornography, sex and violence without meaning. If you can't figure out the way Striking Distance is going in the first few minutes, it just means you've already fallen asleep. Read full review