Absent from screens for over a decade save for a customary notice in the lifeless Hitcher remake that unspooled earlier this year, writer / director / grand master of vehicular mayhem Eric Red has two new directorial projects in the pipeline as well as Jan De Bont at the helm of his script for Stopping Power (rumored to included a 50+ minute car chase). What better time, then, to revisit a lost classic from the Pittsburgh native’s repertoire, 1989’s action-packed hitman v. hitman saga Cohen & Tate?
10-year-old Travis Knight witnesses a murder and is being groomed to testify against a large organized crime family in seclusion. In short order Travis’ family and attending FBI agents are murdered and Travis is abducted by two contentious hitmen, icy veteran Cohen (Roy Scheider) and hotheaded young gun Tate (Adam Baldwin). On the road to Texas where Travis will be “convinced” not to testify, the assassins find themselves caught up in a psychological game enacted by their quarry and turned against one another in an increasingly vicious match played out over highways and rural roads criss-crossing the American southwest.
Those with issues about child endangerment in films needn’t bother checking their coats - Cohen ain’t for you. That said, despite the number of guns waved in Travis’ face and Baldwin’s non-stop nonchalant sadism toward the boy, he remains resilient and proves as cunning, if not more so, than his captors. Under any other hand, it’d be easy to envision this twist leading the concept into parody or Home Alone-styled cartoon violence. Not so with Red – he maintains an icy tone and never lets the threat presented by the titular characters slip from focus.
The ever-reliable Scheider plays Cohen to the hilt, his age and years in the business finally getting the better of him. Firefly fans will be surprised at Baldwin’s sneering turn opposite Scheider, swallowing matches(!) and spewing psycho tough-guy babble from start to finish. Young Harley Cross, as Travis, manages a fine performance free of the usual cringe-inducing tics found in child actors. The film is primarily a three-character piece set inside moving vehicles, each character taking a solo detour before facing off against one another and a small army of Texas state police in the strikingly-staged finale.
Red delivers the expected chase thrills and ladles on ample gore, beginning with the stark shoot-out at Travis’ home and pushing through a number of kinetic set-ups in equally eerie landscapes (a desolate oil field, deserted metro streets). The script snaps with invention and humor, particularly Cohen and Travis’ exchanges with Tate, stuck with the short end of the smarts stick but no less engaging for it. A pitched score from vet Rocky composer Bill Conti is a major plus.
Cohen & Tate was originally released by Nelson Entertainment, who also backed the film’s production. Nelson was dissolved sometime in the early 1990s, with part of their holdings sold to New Line; many of their back catalog titles have been released on DVD by MGM. A re-release would be nice, and doesn’t seem that far-fetched, given Red’s continued output and the presence of fanboy fave Baldwin in an early role. The film reps a taut, bloody slice of ‘80s action just waiting for re-discovery.