Chasers

For a while, Dennis Hopper was the comeback kid. After grandly blowing up his life and career in the 1970s, he emerged as a wildly forceful actor in Blue Velvet and clearly demonstrated with Colors that he could direct a commercial film. He was looking good and cooking hot.

But that was then, this is now. With Chasers, Hopper is stuck with a comedy-drama so limp and ill-conceived that even the oddball characters he directs in the movie barely breath a flutter of life into this D.O.A. production.

Tom Berenger (Major League II) plays an old Navy salt stuck on Shore Patrol duty with an enlisted yuppie (William McNamara). They're assigned to escort a female prisoner (Erika Eleniak of Under Seige) to the brig, but along the way they end up taking a tour of tacky Southern tourist spots.

Gary Busey, Dean Stockwell, Fredric Forrest, Marilu Henner and Crispin Glover make brief appearances to no great effect. Only Hopper himself – as a lecherous salesman named Doggie – has any fun in his movie. No wonder. His character is just passing through – everyone else is stuck in this picture.

Speed

Is the typical Schwarzenegger movie too complex for ya? Do you like your screenplays to resemble a news report from the Indy 500? Do you suspect that Keanu Reeves could be the new Brando, if he ever learned to act? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then this movie is just your Speed.

Hi-octane action is the main ingredient of this mindless thriller that delivers the mindless goods and threatens to be the sur­prise, mindless hit of the summer. Speed has so much action that it doesn't have any room for a plot. It hardly has any room for the actors. Heck, its makers were barely able to squeeze in all of the vehicles they smash up. What do you want, dialogue?

Reeves (in a wooden performance) plays an LAPD cop who likes grunge fashions and unusual solutions to crisis situations. Shooting all of the hostages is one of his bright ideas. Shooting his own partner (Jeff Daniels) is another good one. Given the LAPD's track record, he could eventually make chief of police.

Dennis Hopper (in a lazy performance) plays a brilliant, but deranged, bomb expert who's out to blackmail the city. That's why he has wired a crosstown bus to explode if its speed drops below 50 m.p.h. Actually, his plan makes no sense, since we're talking about Los Angeles, where nobody uses public transportation. But Hopper really needs the money — given the amount of equipment he's using, he owes Radio Shack some big bucks.

But Speed isn't about actors. It's about large-scale, metal-wrenching mayhem, as we demolish assorted elevators, buses, cars, airplanes, subway trains and several bystanders. Speed is about fabulously filmed carnage (first-time director Jan DeBont is a noted cinematographer), ludicrous stunts and existential sarcasm.

Speed has no illusions about itself, as it throttles the audience with it's charged craziness. It may even be the definitive junk movie of the summer.

Just be sure to leave your brain in the lobby.

Red Rock West

It used to be that a guy had to go to the city for a bellyful of murder and duplicity. In the classics of the film noir genre, cities were so packed with corrup­tion that nice guys didn't sim­ply finish last, they usually finished face down in a back alley. But those were the old days when tough guys haunt­ed smoky jazz clubs and rain-slick streets. Today, the action is located on the prairie.

Which is what Nicolas Cage discovers in this year's hot cult movie, Red Rock West. It's the latest piece of "cowboy noir," following in the boot steps of Blood Sim­ple, Flesh and Bone and Kill Me Again, Red Rock West di­rector John Dahl's previous thriller. Not only has Dahl's new effort been a major criti­cal hit on the film festival cir­cuit, but it also has generated a deafening buzz among film buffs.

In Red Rock West, Cage plays a drifter who's cruising for jobs through the oil fields of Wyoming. He's flat broke when he pulls into the town of Red Rock and willing to try almost anything when a bar owner (J. T. Walsh) offers him a gig. What Cage doesn't realize is that Walsh has him confused with a hitman from Dallas whom Walsh hired and is expecting. Cage has no intention of doing the job, which is killing Walsh's wife (Lara Flynn Boyle). Then again, that money is damned tempting....

The plot of Red Rock West turns more twisty than a bad stretch of road, especially when Boyle offers Cage more money to murder her hus­band than her husband is of­fering Cage to kill her. Not to mention when the real hit­man (Dennis Hopper) shows up and offers to whack just about everybody. Add Dwight Yoakam in an effective cameo role, and you've got a movie lover's delight - a taut and surprisingly slick little gem of a film.