Product Details

• Actors: Charlton Heston, John Cassavetes, Martin Balsam, Beau Bridges, Marilyn Hassett
• Directors: Larry Peerce
• Writers: Edward Hume, George LaFountaine
• Producers: Edward S. Feldman
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Universal Studios
• VHS Release Date: January 17, 1995
• Run Time: 115 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 630229651X
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #326,484 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "the whole place is a kill-zone", September 19, 2004

By 

Alejandra Vernon "artist & illustrator" (Long Beach, California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Two-Minute Warning (DVD)

Filmed in and around the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, this often absurd but always entertaining thriller will be enjoyed by those like me who have an affection for '70s action/disaster movies like "Airport", and the many that followed it.

This like the other films follows the usual formula in the first half by giving us a glimpse into the lives of the participants, which the net of fate reels in for the grand finale, and Charlton Heston and John Cassavetes have a slew of excellent actors to back them in these many parts, like Martin Balsam, Beau Bridges, Gena Rowlands, and even Walter Pidgeon as a pickpocket.

The plot starts with an unidentified sniper killing a cyclist from a hotel window, and then moving to a rooftop location in the stadium, where a championship football game will be played to a sold-out crowd. One of the more realistic parts of the film is how the screaming, cheering crowd is oblivious of what is happening around them (some of it amusing if one has a dark sense of humor), as I'm sure would be the case if this event occurred in real life.

In our age of terrorism as the "war of our time", films like this spark the imagination, and make one wonder how this sort of situation would be dealt with in a crowded stadium; there's no doubt that chaos and mayhem would be the inevitable result.

Another interesting aspect is how times have changed in 30 years as far as security for the president and other officials; in the last few decades, one of the things that has changed the most in the world is the size of its governments, and films like this bring that fact into sharp focus.

Fantastic cinematography by Gerald Hirschfeld in the last part of the film, a score by Charles Fox that adds to the tension, and fast-paced direction by Larry Peerce make this a good film for rainy weekends and '70s disaster fans. It received a 1976 Oscar nomination for Best Editing, and total running time is 115 minutes.

DVD extras include Production Notes/Cast & Filmmaker's Bios/Film Highlights/Theatrical Trailer/ Web Links.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It only takes one sniper..., July 10, 2001

By 

Erik North (San Gabriel, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Two Minute Warning [VHS] (VHS Tape)

It only takes one sniper to cause mayhem at a jam-packed Los Angeles Coliseum in this terribly underrated film that was wrongly tagged as an assembly-line disaster pic or a violent big-budget exploitation film. TWO-MINUTE WARNING gets good performances from leading actors Charlton Heston, Martin Balsam, and John Cassavetes in this well-made suspense thriller of police forces trying to stop a mysterious psychotic sniper from shhoting into a crowd of between ninety and one hundred thousand at a championship football game in the Coliseum. The film concludes with a horrible stampede of panic and horror that has all too accurately been repeated in real life in European soccer violence.

Although it has certain melodramatic elements and an all-star lineup (Brock Peters, Gena Rowland, David Janssen, Jack Klugman, etc.), TWO-MINUTE WARNING mostly avoids the pratfalls common to the disaster genre. And the climax, while indisputably violent (earning the film its 'R' rating) is never strictly speaking an overt case of blood and gore. And like Steven Spielberg with the psychotic trucker in DUEL, here director Larry Peerce decides to keep the sniper's identity a secret (until the end).

Since TWO-MINUTE WARNING is on both DVD and VHS, there is now no longer any need to see the butchered, watered-down version that ended up on television. It is in the original director's version that this film should be seen; it is well worth it.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Superbowl Sniper, December 24, 2004

By 

C. A. Luster "The Rook" (Burke, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Two-Minute Warning (DVD)

I was recently trying to recall some of the better disaster movies that came out of the Sixties and Seventies. Two that stood out in my mind was "Black Sunday" and I couldn't recall the name of the other but I recalled a sniper shooting people at a championship football game and S.W.A.T. trying to stop him. I was interested enough in tracking it down that I went to imdb.com and did a search on the word sniper in the plots. When I saw the title "Two Minute Warning" more started to come back to me. The cast is good, but not all of them do much more than cameos. But some performances are quite good, like that of John Cassavetes. The tension, camerawork, and music are excellent. It is intense watching the S.W.A.T team try to stop the sniper without starting a panic at the stadium. Although they eventually get the sniper, he racks up a sizeable body count, especially once the stampede of people try to exit the stadium. I couldn't help thinking of cattle when I saw it. This may not be up to some movies of today, but it is still well worth owning. I recommend it to anyone that likes action movies, especially police related. The movie was popular enough at the time to help bring about the S.W.A.T. TV series.