Director: C. Thomas Howell
Cast: C. Thomas Howell, Teri Ann Linn, Leon, Rick Shapiro

If you are like me when it comes to being interested in the entertainment industry, you no doubt have seen in recent years a growing trend when it comes to various celebrities. That trend is celebrities being exposed after having done various sordid activities, activities that leads to their eventual arrest, getting tried in a court of law, and then sentenced to be imprisoned for a very long time. Some of these particular tarnished celebrities include Harvey Weinstein, R. Kelly, and Bill Cosby. Whenever such a celebrity is put through the humiliating legal wringer, I always consider them to be much dumber than the average criminal that goes through the same process. Yes, these celebrities were certain very dumb for the fact that they committed crimes in the first place and thought they could repeatedly break the law and get away for it forever, but what makes them especially dumb in my eyes is the fact that they were temporarily in positions to get away from being tried and almost certainly convicted should they ever be caught. Let me explain. As the heat was starting to build around these and other such controversial famous figures, I saw that they usually had plenty of time before the cops got involved and started waving a just-issued arrest warrant to go to the airport, book a ticket to a country that didn't have an extradition treaty with the United States such as the United Arab Emirates or Morocco, and live the rest of their lives without the law breathing down their necks. Heck, they could have thought of this idea before they started doing their illegal activities in the first place. They could have used their wealth in non-extradition countries, before getting scrutinized by the law and media for their exposed crimes, to build a summer home and build an off-shore bank account so they would be easily able to fit into the new country that they would now call their home after fleeing the law of the United States.

No doubt about it - the rich definitely have the advantage when it comes to fleeing from pursuers, whether the pursuers be from the long arm of the law, or some kind of criminal element. But the fact that they seldom take the advantage when they get into trouble suggests that having a lot of money makes you very dumb in some ways. And on that note, I'd like to take a look at people who want to disappear from the long arm of the law, or some kind of criminal element, that don't have a lot of money on their hands. When you don't have a lot of money on hand, certainly disappearing from people pursuing you is much more difficult. Money can certainly be a "Get out of jail" card for many fugitives. Over the years I have come across a number of tips for people who want to disappear, whether from the law or other kinds of pursuers. The first thing you have to do if you want to disappear and are not running from the law is telling a trusted individual that you plan to disappear. That way, that person can tell, if necessary, the police that you are not a "missing person", and there won't be publicity generated. But what if you are pursued by the police and/or criminals? Well, I learned that you should settle in a fairly small and conservative town. That way, it's less likely pursuers will find you, of course, but also because you can rent/buy a place to stay from a mom-and-pop housing agency with a cashier's check and no identity checks that could alert pursuers if you were in a big liberal city. Second, make sure that the town has a good public transportation system, because you won't be able to have a car - the government driving bureaus could unintentionally alert your pursuers if they register you. Third thing is to abandon all your regular habits where pursuers might be looking for you. You don't want to join clubs related to your interests, you don't want to subscribe to your favorite streaming services, and forget about your favorite chat rooms and beloved web sites - no more of The Unknown Movies for you, young man/woman!

Of course, there are a bunch of other factors one would have to deal with if they were on the run, such as having to keep away from your friends and family, getting new credit cards, and the always-present possibility of your pursuers - whether they be law enforcers or some kind of criminal element - tracking you down and capturing you. With all these challenges, it's no wonder countless screenwriters have sat down in front of their typewriters and computers and written screenplays about people on the run; after all these decades, it's still a ripe source of good drama. And I have to confess that I quite often like to watch these on-the-run movies, not just because they can have great drama, they can make me think about what I would do if I were in the protagonists' shoes - would I be more successful or less successful in the same situation? You can then probably imagine that when I came across the on-the-run movie Pure Danger, I was interested in giving it a viewing. But there were additional incentives as well, the biggest being that it was from PM Entertainment, one of my favorite movie studios of all time that made action classics like Last Man Standing, The Silencers, and Rage. But there was also the fact that its star, C. Thomas Howell (The Sweeper), was also the director. Could Howell have the same panache with breaking glass and cars flipping in the air as PM Entertainment honchos Joseph Merhi and Richard Pepin had when they sat in the director's chair? In Pure Danger, Howell plays a character in the city of Reno by the name of Johnie Dean, who at the beginning of the movie is shown to have a craptastic life. Being a parolee, all he can get for work is as a lowly cook at a greasy spoon diner, and his parole officer is not only a relentless hardass on his case, he also happens to be a former member of the cast of Happy Days. The only sympathy Johnie gets is from Becky (Teri Ann Linn, Aloha Summer), one of the waitresses at the diner. One day in another part of Reno, an exchange is planned between a criminal courier with a bag of diamonds with mobster DePalma (Michael Russo, Death Wish 4: The Crackdown). Inevitably there is a disagreement, inevitably shots are fired, and the courier gets away from the scene, although gravely wounded. Eventually he staggers into the diner where Johnie and Becky work, and shortly after calling his boss as to where he is, dies from his wound. When Becky and Johnie search the now dead courier and find the diamonds in the bag, Johnie and Becky barely manage to escape from DePalma and his goons and the courier's boss Felix (Leon, Cool Runnings) and his goons. Johnie and Becky flee to Los Angeles, where they plan to get money for the diamonds with the help of Johnie's former associate Dice (Rick Sharpiro, Pootie Tang), and then they will have all they need for comfort for the rest of their lives. But can they trust Dice, and stay at least one step ahead of the DePalma and Felix gangs?

Pure Danger was not the first time actor C. Thomas Howell stepped behind the camera to direct - a year earlier, he directed the thriller Hourglass, which he also wrote and starred in. I haven't seen that earlier film, but I can only imagine how it can be from seeing how Howell directed Pure Danger - and I'm not making a favorable comparison. Yes, I will admit that the direction of this film is not without merit, most notably in the action sequences. Those with a penchant for the style of action found in PM Entertainment movies will be satisfied with what this movie has to offer in this field. There are a couple of shootouts, one in a casino and the other in a junkyard, that are jammed-packed with nice chaotic energy and slaughter. There are several vehicular chases that have more of that chaotic energy, plus some truly eye-popping stunt work that includes an (unbelievable!!!) fiery multi-car pile-up on a Los Angeles freeway in the movie's climax. But I have a feeling that all this admittedly spectacular action was more due to PM Entertainment's reliable stunt work team used in other movies more than with Howell's commandments from the director's chair. Now, before I get to critiquing Howell's direction, I have to put out an observation about something in Pure Danger that would have stimied even the best director: the movie was clearly lacking the lavish budget that was typically given to PM movies of this period. Although I won't say that Pure Danger looks to have been shot in the alleys and abandoned buildings behind the studio, the actual locations don't look that much better. The outdoor locations for the most part look drab and uninteresting. Many of the indoor locations look like buildings that had been abandoned earlier and were hastily set dressed, or are unconvincing sets on soundstages. For that latter option, Howell does try to mask the cheapness by lowering the lighting, but that just brings up questions like, "Why are the people entering that 'morgue' not bothering to turn on the lights in order to more easily get what they want there?"

Whether there is proper lighting or not, viewers will see that director Howell doesn't seem to be able to add much flair outside the bravura action sequences. Occasionally you'll see a tricky tracking shot or a Dutch angle, but apart from such little touches, you don't feel a true director's stamp on the production. In fact, sometimes Howell's direction really hurts; was it his idea to add music over the action sequences that you can hardly hear? Worse of all, Howell decides to eschew the slightly tongue-in-cheek feel of other PM movies in favor of broad comedy, and it's truly painful to witness bodyguards repeatedly playing "Rock paper scissors", or another goon suffering repeatedly from narcolepsy (even during a wild car chase.) Howell could have easily cut out this unfunny broad comedy, but admittedly he would still have to struggle with a clunky screenplay written by PM screenwriting regulars William Applegate Jr. and Joseph John Barmettler. There's one scene where the wounded courier spouts a fairly energetic monologue about what to do with the package right in front on Becky before suddenly dropping dead quicker than a single heartbeat, and there's the ability of Felix to managing to track down the two protagonists more than once with only seemingly psychic powers and no other clues. I will admit that there was one thing about Pure Danger's screenplay that was reasonably interesting, and that was the ending. I won't spoil what happens in the ending, except to say that it's considerably different than the endings PM Entertainment fans will be accustomed to, and to a degree it's even a little clever in construction. Of course, you'll have to sit through some really bad screenwriting for about ninety or so minutes in order to watch that ending, and the ending isn't that good to make slogging through the first ninety or so minutes worthwhile.

But the worst thing about the screenplay for Pure Danger has to be how it writes its characters - though how the actors choose to act out these characters, I admit, makes the finished results even worse than what was on the printed page. Take, for example, the character of Dice. The screenplay gives the character no favors by making him extremely weaselly and not the least bit sympathetic. However, actor Rick Sharpiro makes Dice even more irritating by his acting style; the best way I can describe it is if you can imagine Joe Pesci trying to do his best Pauly Shore imitation. (Speaking of obnoxious comedy figures, the always-irritating comedian Carrot Top has a cameo in the movie; director Howell made a rare good decision in this movie to give the guy a mangled death.) In second place for the category for most grating performance in the movie has to go to its lead, C. Thomas Howell. Now, it's possible that Howell the director was too busy with his complicated job to coach Howell the actor, but whatever the reason, Howell the actor makes his character extremely unsympathetic. Although his character had been wrongly imprisoned, his brash bravado talking, his shaking around like he has to go to the bathroom really badly, and one of the most unconvincing mustaches in cinematic history make him a true "antihero" in the sense he isn't at all anyone you'll want to see succeed. The only performer who manages to make his character in Pure Danger survive intact is actor Leon; he gives bad guy Felix a coolness and threatening presence that while isn't the best of this kind of cinematic character, is Oscar-worthy compared to the rest of the cast. As you can see, Pure Danger is, to put it mildly, not a movie that can be considered among the best of what PM Entertainment put out during its memorable run. About its only merits are its (glorious!!!) action sequences, and so you won't be tempted to watch the entire movie and sitting through its awful characters and incompetent storytelling to get to the action, I am going to end this review by saving you some torture. I'm including a YouTube link to one of its action sequences; pay extra attention once the clip gets to the 6:00 mark. Here is the link to that action sequence.

(Posted December 5, 2023)