3:15 (US - 1986) Directed by Larry Gross. Written by Sam Bernard and Michael Jacobs. Cast: Adam Baldwin, Deborah Foreman, Scott McGinnis, Danny De La Paz, Ed Lauter, Rene Auberjonois, Wayne Crawford, John Scott Clough, Mario Van Peebles, Wings Hauser, Jesse Aragon, Bradford Bancroft, Jeb Ellis-Brown, Panchito Gomez, Wendy Barry, Joseph Brutsman, Lori Eastside, Nancy Locke Hauser, Dean Devlin, John Doe, Roy London, Van Quattro, Gina Gershon, Rusty Cundieff. (R, 85 mins) If you had cable in the late '80s, then you probably caught at least some of 3:15, a minor entry in the "high school gangs run amok" subgenre that, quality-wise, falls somewhere right in the middle between the exemplary CLASS OF 1984 and the ridiculous TUFF TURF. Of course, there were many others during this period from 1982 to 1987--SAVAGE STREETS, YOUNG WARRIORS, THE NEW KIDS, DANGEROUSLY CLOSE, UNDER COVER, THE PRINCIPAL, and the largely comedic cult favorite THREE O'CLOCK HIGH to name a few--so it was easy for 3:15 to get lost in the shuffle. It got only sporadic play in theaters in the spring of 1986 after two years on the shelf, when it was finally picked up by the apparently one-and-done Dakota Entertainment Corporation, though in nearly every way, it's got an undeniable Cannon aura about it, starting with the score by Gary Chang (52 PICK-UP, FIREWALKER). It also had a confusing marketing campaign where it was hard to ascertain what the movie was even called. The official one-sheet has it as 3:15: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH, but when it opened in Toledo, OH in April 1986, it was advertised as the clunky SHOWDOWN AT LINCOLN HIGH AT 3:15, while the fine print in the ad called it 3:15 - MOMENT OF TRUTH, and the theater listings had it as SHOWDOWN AT LINCOLN HIGH. The actual title on the film is simply 3:15, which is what's stuck. To date, it's the only feature film directed by Larry Gross, a veteran screenwriter and occasional back-in-the-day Walter Hill collaborator who co-wrote 48 HRS, STREETS OF FIRE, and GERONIMO: AN AMERICAN LEGEND, with other writing credits ranging from Wayne Wang's CHINESE BOX to Clint Eastwood's TRUE CRIME to the doomed movie version of PROZAC NATION.
Just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), 3:15 is essentially a face-off between two actors who were best known at the time for their presence in other movies that dealt with tangentially-related subjects. Hero Adam Baldwin was the title character in 1980's MY BODYGUARD, protecting scrawny Chris Makepeace from the relentless bullying of Matt Dillon, while villain Danny De La Paz was best known as Chuco in 1979's BOULEVARD NIGHTS, one of several entries in a short-lived gang craze from that year, including THE WANDERERS, OVER THE EDGE, WALK PROUD, and the classic THE WARRIORS. It doesn't help the credibility of 3:15 when, at the time of filming in 1984, Baldwin was 22 and looked older, while De La Paz was 27, and both were still playing high school students, but all of the kids here look way too old, with several extras in a few shots who appear to be within striking distance of 40. Baldwin is Jeff, who was once a member of the Cobras but walked away when leader Cinco (De La Paz) killed a guy for no reason. A year later, Jeff is a tough but straight-arrow kid with a nice girlfriend in Sherry (VALLEY GIRL's Deborah Foreman, who had MY CHAUFFEUR and APRIL FOOL'S DAY in theaters around the same time), but his past inevitably comes back to haunt him. The school is overrun with drugs and crime, and cowardly principal Horner (Rene Auberjonois)--introduced shouting "These kids are so high on dope that they might as well be zombies!"--turns to cynical cop Moran (Ed Lauter), who organizes a raid targeting Cinco and his gang. A frantic Cinco asks Jeff to stash some drugs for him for old times' sake, and when he refuses and Cinco is arrested, the gang leader vows revenge. Since Cinco managed to dump the drugs before being apprehended, Moran can only hold him for 48 hours, and the whole school knows shit's going down in two days, at 3:15, when Cinco and the Cobras intend to deal with Jeff once and for all.
3:15 opening in Toledo, OH on 4/18/1986, advertised
as SHOWDOWN AT LINCOLN HIGH
Rarely in the "high school gangs run amok" craze have the adults in charge been more useless than they are here. Horner tries to talk Jeff into testifying against Cinco, and when he won't, Horner does what any dedicated education leader does: leaves the school until the showdown is over, right around the time Moran and the cops finally show up, even though Cinco and the Cobras have basically been standing at street corners shouting that Jeff is dead meat at 3:15. There's certainly some subtext in the way the script by Sam Bernard (RAD, WARLOCK: THE ARMAGEDDON) and Michael Jacobs (CERTAIN FURY, HALLOWEEN 5: THE REVENGE OF MICHAEL MYERS) lays out the conflict between Jeff and Cinco like it's an ugly breakup, with Cinco the jilted spouse who just can't let Jeff go. It's not an unsung classic of its kind, but 3:15 is entertaining B-movie trash, even if it doesn't utilize some of its established plot elements to their full potential: why introduce a high-school gang of Asian martial arts experts if they never come into play? Cannon sure as shit wouldn't have passed up that opportunity. Gross does manage to pull off one memorably stylish sequence with the raid on the school and the pursuit of Cinco and the Cobras set to a very effectively-used "Lined Up" by Shriekback. It also has an oddball supporting cast with some cult favorites like Foreman, Lauter, Auberjonois, Wayne Crawford (JAKE SPEED) as a concerned teacher ("Goddammit Jeff, will ya listen to me?"), John Doe as a drunk guy trying to get into a club, and the great Wings Hauser getting one scene as Sherry's Jeff-hating dad (Wings' wife Nancy plays her mom). You also get some famous names-to-be like Mario Van Peebles as the leader of the M-16s, the school's black gang (like the kung-fu gang, they never factor into the proceedings), Gina Gershon as a Cobra babe, future FEAR OF A BLACK HAT and TALES FROM THE HOOD director Rusty Cundieff as an M-16, and Dean Devlin as "Gum Chewer," years before turning to screenwriting and partnering with director Roland Emmerich on hits like UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, STARGATE, INDEPENDENCE DAY, and THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW.
Does anyone know what this movie is called?
The ad says one thing but the credits say
another. Is "at 3:15" part of the title or is there just one showing at 3:15?
Written and directed by Eric Red. Cast: Roy Scheider, Adam Baldwin, Harley Cross, Cooper Huckabee, Suzanne Savoy, Frank Bates. (R, 86 mins)
With a title that sounds like a late '80s buddy cop comedy, COHEN AND TATE was all but abandoned by Hemdale, who only gave it a limited release with zero publicity or advertising in January 1989 before it quietly appeared on video store shelves a year later. The directorial debut of Eric Red, who made a name for himself as a screenwriter with 1986's THE HITCHER and 1987's NEAR DARK, the mob thriller/road movie COHEN AND TATE, inspired by O. Henry's short story The Ransom of Red Chief, may be a surface departure from Red's work in the horror genre, but it's pretty squarely in his wheelhouse, as he loves the sinister potential and inherent unease of late nights on dark highways and deserted back roads. COHEN AND TATE makes excellent use of color, particularly in the recurrent red glow of taillights on the faces of the characters, giving it an effectively moody feel that makes it ideal for 2:00 am viewing. COHEN AND TATE was quickly forgotten after its initial, far-below-the-radar release, but has proven surprisingly resilient in cult movie circles. Shout! Factory has just answered the demand with a special edition Blu-ray release, which features a Red commentary, interviews with cast and crew members, and deleted/alternate scenes, including several scenes of graphic violence that had to be toned down to avoid an X rating.
After witnessing a mob hit in Houston, nine-year-old Travis Knight (Harley Cross of THE BELIEVERS and THE FLY II) and his parents are put in witness protection at a small Oklahoma farmhouse. Thanks to an FBI agent on the mob's payroll, two hired killers show up and slaughter the agents and Travis' parents before hitting the road back to Houston to deliver Travis to the bosses. Cohen (Roy Scheider), the older of the two and sporting a hearing aid, is cynical about his job and knows he's expendable and that guys like him can get whacked at any moment, but he's a professional and does what he's paid to do. He's always worked alone, and he's offended that the bosses made him take a partner for this job: the hulking, sadistic, hot-headed Tate (Adam Baldwin), who just wants to shoot Travis in the head and be done with it. Cohen doesn't like Tate and the feeling is mutual. The perceptive Travis picks up on this and starts playing the two against each other before forming a tentative alliance with Cohen when they both figure out that Tate would just as soon kill both of them. The job gets more complicated when a radio report reveals that Travis' dad (Cooper Huckabee) has somehow survived his gunshot wounds and has given a description of the pair to the police--perhaps the bosses have realized that Cohen's lost a step or two in his advancing age--who are now actively pursuing the pair on the way from Oklahoma to Houston.
COHEN AND TATE is an involving little B-picture but it has some major issues. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but the plot is frequently too far-fetched for its own good. For instance, early on, when Travis briefly escapes and ends up with a highway patrolman (Frank Bates), does it make any sense at all that Cohen, ostensibly the cooler, more level-headed of the two killers, would drive up behind the cruiser and shoot the patrolman in the head, forcing Travis to steer the speeding vehicle from the passenger seat? Don't they need to deliver him alive? On what planet does that make sense? Cohen might be hard of hearing, but he's not suffering from dementia. Also witness what might be cinema's least likely way of getting through a roadblock in a scene that's often cited as suspenseful highlight but just seems silly and unintentionally funny. And how does Tate chase Travis across a busy highway with Frogger-levels of speeding traffic in both directions, while hoisting a shotgun, and yet, no one seems to notice? Not only that, but the highway was practically empty two seconds earlier. Where did all this traffic come from? Did a sellout performance at Plot Convenience Playhouse just let out?
OK, so COHEN AND TATE has some problems. But Red's stylish direction and the work of the three leads do a lot of the heavy lifting that salvages Red's script occasionally dropping the ball. The great Scheider delivers one of his best performances in one of his last big-screen leads before aging into supporting roles, TV and straight-to-video. His Cohen is a fascinating character--in a retrospective doc on the Blu-ray, Red describes Cohen as a gangster with a "samurai code"--and one to which Scheider fully commits. Late in the film, the cool, steely Cohen turns momentarily frantic and helpless when his hearing aid pops out, and Red says that bit was all Scheider's idea to use the hearing aid as more than just a visual prop. Baldwin, best known at the time for the title role in 1980's MY BODYGUARD and as Animal Mother in Stanley Kubrick's FULL METAL JACKET (1987), though he would go on to co-star in the cult TV series FIREFLY and its big-screen spinoff SERENITY, is a good match with Scheider and the two do a fine job of getting on one another's nerves. But it's Cross who's really the emotional center of the film and he plays it very believably and never gets annoying, displaying a wisdom beyond his years that the young actor possessed in real life: he was interviewed on TODAY in 1987 to plug THE BELIEVERS, and the then-nine-year-old actor cited LAST TANGO IN PARIS as his favorite Marlon Brando movie. Cross appeared in a few films into his teen years, most notably the little-seen underground film THE BOY WHO CRIED BITCH (1991) and Alex de la Iglesia's insane PERDITA DURANGO (1997) aka DANCE WITH THE DEVIL but hasn't acted since a bit part in 2004's KINSEY. He stayed in touch with Bates over the years, with the two eventually becoming business partners and founding the Hint Mint line of breath mints.
COHEN AND TATE writer/director Eric Red
Red reteamed with NEAR DARK director Kathryn Bigelow for her 1990 film BLUE STEEL, was one of several screenwriters who turned in a draft for the troubled ALIEN 3 (1992), and directed two horror films (1991's BODY PARTS and 1996's BAD MOON) and a Showtime movie (1996's UNDERTOW) before making news more for his personal problems than his work. Years of battling financial troubles and personal demons culminated in a bizarre and tragic 2000 incident that involved a car crash that might've been a Red suicide attempt but inadvertently killed two bystanders instead, followed by Red getting out of his vehicle and slitting his own throat with a shard of glass. This horrific incident essentially derailed his filmmaking career. While his former writing partner Bigelow has gone on to Oscar glory with THE HURT LOCKER and the acclaim of last year's ZERO DARK THIRTY, Red has only made one film since the accident (2008's straight-to-DVD 100 FEET) but has become a regular fixture on the convention circuit and at midnight screenings of THE HITCHER and NEAR DARK. It didn't take long for those Red-penned films to find an audience, but COHEN AND TATE's fan base has been gradually expanding over the last 20+ years, and Red has even recently hosted some screenings of it. The odd circumstances of his suicide attempt still follow him but he seems to have rebuilt his life and gained acceptance in cult movie circles.
COHEN AND TATE isn't an undiscovered classic by any means. It suffers from too many lapses in logic to entirely work as a credible thriller, but fans of the actors, particularly Scheider, should definitely give it a look. Scheider (1932-2008) had a reputation for being difficult (he bailed on THE DEER HUNTER and only agreed to do JAWS 2 to avoid a lawsuit, and during the shooting of JAWS 2, he and director Jeannot Szwarc allegedly came to blows), and his days on the A-list ended quite abruptly in the mid-1980s. COHEN AND TATE showed that even though he may have fallen out of favor in Hollywood as a leading man, he still had that same fire and that same intensity that he brought to essential films like THE FRENCH CONNECTION, JAWS, SORCERER, and ALL THAT JAZZ. COHEN AND TATE isn't necessarily a great movie, but it does showcase a great Roy Scheider performance.
