One of Britain’s
most reliable and watchable character actors, Postlethwaite usually
divides
his time between gritty Brit flicks like
Brassed Off, hip Hollywood thrillers like The Usual Suspects and blockbuster
fare such as the Jurassic Park sequel, The Lost World.
Back in 1992,
however, he was being manhandled and abused by a scenery-chomping Rutger
Hauer in this absolutely ludicrous monster movie.
It’s 2008, and London is flooded by environmental disaster. Sloshing
around in the stagnant filth is a demonic murderer with a fondness for
ripping out hearts. Hot on the heels of this fearsome foe is Detective
Harley Stone (Hauer), a burned out cop-on-the-edge who lost his partner
to the beast. He survives on a diet of chocolate and coffee, clashes
constantly with his grumpy boss (the ever-reliable Alun Armstrong) and
is involved in a dubious relationship with his partner’s widow
(Kim Cattrall). He even hears the killer’s heartbeat pounding in
his mind, and is prone to firing random shots into the night on the off-chance
that he might hit it.
He’s a walking cliché, in other words,
and that’s why he clashes with Paulsen (Postlethwaite), the old
school copper who, not unreasonably, got Stone suspended in the first
place for being a psychotic loon.
Far from being a major character, Postlethwaite is more of a recurring
pain in the ass, and pretty much every scene that he shares with Hauer
ends with him being rammed against the wall by his throat, while Harley
Stone - and, seriously, isn’t that just the best name ever for
a movie cop? – growls and snarls.
Sadly, Postlethwaite doesn’t get to play much of a role in the
rest of the movie. As the final act looms, everything slips into generic
hunt-the-monster mode as Hauer stalks his prey under the city and eventually
manages to electrocute and explode the thing, and we never see Postlethwaite
again. Given his antagonism throughout the movie, you’d be forgiven
for thinking he’d suffer some ironic death at the film’s
climax but this is the sort of mindless video shelf filler where we never
even find out what the creature is, or why it feels compelled to eat
human hearts, let alone have time to round out the feeble arc of a secondary
character.
Need to know: The extent of London’s flooded future seems to vary
from shot to shot. For the wide helicopter shots of the city, things
look much as they are now, with the Thames clearly in no danger of spilling
into the streets. Similarly, for the few scenes where the characters
race around the main thoroughfares of London, the flood water is noticeably
absent - though the roads are damp, as if they waited for a rainy day
to film. It’s only when the action switches to back alleys and
building interiors – in other words, the parts of the movie that
could be shot on a set – that the water magically rises to knee
height. Director Tony Maylam also helmed the notorious slasher movie,
The Burning (see: Holly Hunter).
Availability: Split Second is currently unavailable
on DVD. A Region 1 US disc was released, but is currently hard to find.
As a stalwart
of the last years of the video era, second hand VHS is your best – and
cheapest - bet.
