Trespass (1992)
Trespass utlilizes the talents of alot of folks whom you’ve most certainly heard of, but may not appreciate quite as much as you should. First of which, there are the leads, Bill Paxton and William Sadler, who play firemen who get in way over their heads here after indulging in the titular act.
Bill Paxton has become a bit more famous, he’s headlining HBO’s Big Love now, but he remains underrated. Paxton is one of the best “straight men” in the last two decades, grounding far out premises and characters in an unshowy, ego-free realism that gets better upon each viewing. I’m talking A Simple Plan, Frailty, One False Move, Apollo 13 and Tombstone among others.
The definitive Paxton straight man performance would be either A Simple Plan or the brilliant One False Move (both happen to feature career best work from co-star Billy Bob Thornton as well.) It should also be noted that Paxton can steal the show when he wants to too, and I’m noting his work with James Cameron and his performance in Near Dark as exhibits A-D in support of this.
William Sadler has popped up in Tales From the Crypt (both show and movie), The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and made a particular impression as a sexual deviate in Bill Condon’s Kinsey a few years past, but in general he’s never really graduated from the minors in audience recognition. Sadler has a great no bullshit voice, and lined, craggy prescence; he can seem friendly, accomodating and completely feral within seconds of one another.
So yeah, the idea of these two guys mixing it up in an abandoned factory in the middle of a deadly gang territory presided over by Ices T and Cube pushes more than one B movie heaven pressure point. It also happens that Trespass was directed by Walter Hill, the third person you should be familiar with, who does unapologetic, high throttle machismo like no one else I can think of who is still living or working. I’ve listed enough, but what the hell: 48 Hrs, The Long Riders (underrated), The Warriors, Undisputed, Southern Comfort.
I had watched Trespass in the early nineties while on a WalterHill binge, and liked it and forgotten it. I caught it again a few days ago. The film is, like much of Hill’s work, remarkably lean and devoid of extraneous crap. Paxton and Sadler find the treasure map five minutes into the picture, they’re at the factory maybe another five minutes after that. They’ve witnessed a murder at the hands of King James (Ice T) maybe five minutes after that. Obligatory talk of wives and other expostion isn’t exchanged in the kitchen in one of the men’s homes the night before leaving, its tossed off in Sadler’s SUV on the way to said factory. Hill (and writers Robert Zemickis (!) and Bob Gale) are pros here.
Trespass would appear to be a hybrid of The Treasure of the Sierre Madre and a more urban us against them action picture like Assault on Precinct 13. This film is canny in blending the genres, and divides our sympathies effectively. Ice T is quite good as the gangster King James, and the character has been imagined as more than just a representation of all that middle class white guys fear. Refreshingly, the villian here is actually smarter than the protaganists.
But neither are the smartest. That honor would go to Art Evans’ Bradlee, a man who happens to be squatting in the factory, and who turns out, much to our amusement, to be a loose approximation of the Walter Huston character in Madre. Evans gets the film’s very satifying final image, which refutes the annoying cliche that no one can actually get the money or treasure in a feuding over money or treasure picture.
My only real problem with Trespass is a needless visual gimmick where we occassionally see from the POV of a home video camera (this may have been a little more controversial at the time, being how close this film’s release was to the Rodney King incident) but otherwise Hill keeps all the various elements of the story up in the air, and flowing with ease and finesse. Trespass is unassuming, taut and tasty.
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