Customer Reviews

Hand Gun

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This entertaining and well-crafted film opens with a ferocious shootout, following a New York City daylight heist, after which only one of the bandits survives, Jack McCallister (Seymour Cassel), who flees with one-half million dollars that he stows in a Coney Island storage facility locker before going to a hiding spot, a dingy apartment, while being sought by police and mobsters, in addition to Jack's sons George (Treat Williams) and Michael (Paul Schulze), all of whom are desirous of locating the secreted loot. Jack is deceived and gunned down, but before his death he separately tells his sons a portion of information that will lead them to the locker, and if they combine this death throe knowledge, the cash will be theirs to share equally, but mutual distrust between the brothers who additionally are being pursued by renegade police and gangsters, leads to an exciting and ironic climax. Acting throughout is top-flight with players being ably directed, and ad libbing is smoothly accomplished by Williams, together with Frank Vincent and others, the former earning acting honours with his terrific turn as an amoral career criminal, while others who impress include Schulze, Cassel, Star Jasper and the unduplicatable Anna Thomson (Levine) as Jack's lady love. Director Whitney Ransick scripts as well, a very neatly composed screenplay, indeed, as he confidently weaves various subplots together, abetted by consistently creative compositions from cinematographer Michael Spiller who, along with composer Douglas J. Cuomo, strongly benefit a film that avoids hackneyed formulae that plague its genre of crime themed works, thanks to the solid contributions from all involved, including those charged with post-production finishing.

This is one of my favorite movies of all time and really needs to be considered a classic. It's one of those movies that surprises me more people don't know about.

Treat Williams plays one of the sons in a family of crooks. He and his brother find out his father had made a big score, which ended up getting his father shot to death, and both try to find the stashed loot before the other brother, as well as all sorts of other hoodlums, find it.

It's extremely well done, Treat Williams, Seymour Cassel and Paul Shulze play the parts perfectly and the rest of the cast are very recognizable and do a great job. Good movies are only great when the actors all do their jobs well and every single actor for every bit part, does a great job with their character. It's one of those movies that, after you finish watching the thing, you say "Wow, that was a good movie. How come I never heard of it?"

It's well worth having this in your collection...if you can find the DVD, of course.