One of the absolute bleakest movies I’ve watched in a while, one preoccupied with the complete and utter moral rot at the heart of law enforcement. William Petersen turns in a pitch-perfect performance of controlled escalation as he descends into ever more unhinged depths to try to catch his prey while bringing his idealistic partner down into the moral muck with him. I’ve never seen an action thriller that hates cops this much and so firmly believes that the power and violence and masculine camaraderie of the police inevitably turns them worse than whoever it is they’re trying to catch.
Also the legendary car chase, where a car gets driven the wrong way down the LA freeway, is some incredibly unhinged filmmaking, I have no idea how they shot it. The constant switches to a swerving first-person camera weaving through oncoming traffic is so stressful and disorienting, truly one of the all-time great car chases
