Split Second

    The movie ‘Split Second’ was not equal to the amount of nostalgia I’d placed upon it. Built up from years of pleasant memories of college watch parties, drunken late nights of increasingly tilted viewing, and the joy of having an inexplicable ‘favorite movie’ story with which I could mystify people, it all eventually came to a head when, for the first time in any number of years, I sat down and watched it with post-internet-film-critic eyes.

    Not that it’s a terrible movie. Depending on what kind of curve you’re willing to grade it on it might even make its way up to almost good. But it is what it is, a fantasy/horror/action movie with sights set several clicks above its budget and a script that could have used a couple more rewrites. Would’ve also been nice to have a Rutger Hauer just a bit closer to giving a damn.

    But even with all that said it will always have a place in my heart for the character of Dick Durkin.

    The basic premise of the movie is simple: set in the then-future of 2008, global warming has created a quasi-apocalyptic London awash in rising tides and waves of hungry rats. Filmed in 1992 the movie stars Rutger Hauer as a cop on the edge who, having survived a serial killer that took the life of his partner, will stop at nothing to catch the killer with whom he shares an inexplicable psychic connection. Said killer is eventually revealed to be a 10-foot tall actual Satanic monster which retroactively makes every instance where he acts like your typical movie serial killer utterly inexplicable but maybe they just assumed no one would watch this more than once.

    I wrote above that Rutger Hauer didn’t give a damn and that’s a bit unfair. He’s trying but it’s very clear that either the director didn’t have the first clue on how to direct him or he got bored and decided to do his own thing. He’s dressed head-to-toe in black leather with big ol’ stompy boots and strapped down with ridiculously huge guns and decides to play crazy as someone who talks to dogs and has constant panic attacks. He does give off an air of menace but it’s one of instability, the kind where you’re never quite sure where that gun is going to be pointing next.

 

Subtle.

    There is less an actual plot than a series of things that happen. People are killed in gruesome ways, things that resemble clues are left to taunt the detectives, a heartbeat pumps away periodically that seems to be both diegetic and non-diegetic depending on the needs of the scene. It has seen better movies and knows what kinds of scenes to include but isn’t quite sure how to connect them all together. Another thing the internet has now ruined for me is the ability to recognize when a movie has a limited number of sets and so gets economical with locations. I think there are a grand total of four actual full sets with maybe three or four more smaller locations thrown in for short scenes.

    Oh, and variations of The Moody Blues ‘Knights in White Satin’ start popping up on the soundtrack around 35 minutes in. It makes no sense but I’m so fond of it I’ve never dared to look into the story behind it.

    But it’s all worth it for Dick Durkin.

Dunno, think I'm gonna have to go with Dick on this one.

    Assigned to be Rutger Hauer’s partner after the killer resurfaces (I have seen this movie well into the double digit number of times and the timeline has never made any sense), Dick is a bespectacled Oxford grad played by Alastair Duncan, credited as Neil Duncan, and one of my personal ‘hey it’s that guy’ guys. If you know him at all it’s for the voice of Mimir in the 2018 ‘God of War.’ He’s a bit nerdy but also obviously smart and good at his job so when Rutger Hauer spends most of the rest of the move relentlessly bullying him I’m completely on Dick’s side.

    Calling this film good for the interplay of characters is to be ludicrously generous but its enough of a hook that I’m not at all ready to completely give up on it. Rutger Hauer and Alastair Duncan manage to wrangle something like chemistry from their utilitarian lines and awkward blocking. Despite themselves the characters start to get along as Dick proves himself useful and Rutger Hauer proves he’s not completely a bastard. Dick runs every morning and has a great relationship with his girlfriend. He has a dorky key chain he refuses to be embarrassed about. He loves comics and is unrepentantly brainy. In the end he’s just as much of a hero as Rutger, which is all I really needed.

    Other things, y’know, happen. Pete Postlethwaite, of all people, still lodged in my memory as his character from ‘In the Name of the Father,’ a movie I somehow saw in the theater, plays an antagonistic cop, there’s a scene in a techno bar in, I will remind you, 2008 London, with the most early-90’s sludge of music I have possibly ever heard thumping in the background, there’s a scene where they take the “We’re gonna need a bigger boat” moment from Jaws and stretch it out for something like an actual five minute set of scenes, and no less a character actor than Alun Armstrong as the stereotypical furious police chief (yes, you know who he is).

 

I just love the way the tiny claws catch on his glasses.

    The whole thing ends in a sewer level where our heroes use their big manly guns and grenades to kill the big beastie and there’s possibly the lamest ‘… or is it?’ ending shot of all time as air bubbles pop up to the surface of the inexplicably deep sewer water, but you know, points for trying. Of ending on a note of camaraderie and accomplishment that sends us to the closing credits with a bit of a skip in our step.

    It’s all rather slapdash and intensely derivative and not in the least bit scary but I’d be lying if I don’t still see faint echoes of what my teenage self saw in this. I can’t tell the weird story about this obscure B-movie that’s somehow my favorite anymore but I can tell the odd journey I’ve taken with this little flick that somehow grabbed my attention from the shelf in that little hole-in-the-wall video store across from the coffee shop back in college.

    Kim Cattrall is also in this movie.