lost-in-limbo Nothing desperate here. Film-maker Michael Cimino would team up with Mickey Rourke again, after the crime epic "Year of the Dragon" five years earlier. But on this occasion we would see a lacklustre remake of the 1955 feature (which was originally adapted from a novel / stage play) with some nice scope (some beautifully scenic Utah backdrops with agile camera-work), but slightly leaden material and mechanical execution starves it of suspense and believability. Here's a glum siege movie (although its more like tedious house-sitting) that never feels all that threatening despite the best efforts by a smooth talking psycho Mickey Rourke and an neurotically edgy David Morse as some criminals that take a family hostage in their home. It lacks a pulse, tending to be limitedly forced and silly in its unreasonable actions. Where it only gets worse the further it goes along. Rocky relationships are put to the test and trust becomes the key factor for getting through this ordeal - for both sides. Mimi Rogers and Anthony Hopkins add some stalwart class. Kelly Lynch, Elias Koteas and Shawnee Smith are decent enough. Although I couldn't stand Lindsay Crouse's overbearing performance. David Mansfield's high-strung music score felt out of place. Glossy, but uninvolved dramatic thriller."You and I are going to be friends."

qormi Michael Cimino was heralded for "The Deer Hunter", which was an inspired, powerful film, the complete opposite of the disastrous "Heaven's Gate". Now, Cimino breaks new ground with "The Desperate Hours". The whole movie is a mess. I'll list just a few examples:The head of the FBI unit was, of course, a woman. She had the most ridiculous 80's blonde, curly "big hair" imaginable. It was always blowing in her face. She spoke with the most phony southern accent I ever heard. She always was yelling and giving orders. We get it; she's in charge.The scene where one of the criminals, covered in blood, came across two college girls who were standing by their truck at a gas station. These girls had bodies so hot that they were x-rated. One of them had the most outlandish denim shorts on. No woman could ever have worn them in public. 99% of her buttocks poured out of them.In another scene, the girlfriend of one of the criminals was being fitted with a hidden microphone. So there she is, in a room full of people, completely topless, as a man tapes a microphone between her breasts. She was talking to the woman FBI leader like this was an everyday occurrence as the FBI man carefully taped the mike on her skin. I'm not making this up. And her breasts were the most perky money could buy.The scene where the fugitive is walking through the picturesque wilderness. The theme from "Red River Valley" is playing. The cops tell him to drop his gun from 100 yards away. He holds the pistol in the air and they shoot him at least 100 times with automatic weapons.Mickey Rourke runs out of bullets, so Anthony Hopkins, who is 20 years older than Rourke, out of shape, and covered in blood from a chest wound, holds a pistol in one hand and drags and tosses Rourke around like a rag doll. Not once did Rourke think of grabbing the gun from Hopkins' hand. As Hopkins throws Rourke down the stairs with one hand, the entire banister rail, which runs the length of the stairs, breaks off. Now this is a grand staircase in an upper class mansion. So much for craftsmanship.That's just the tip of the iceberg. This movie is just as bad as anything Ed Wood put out.

bleex Cimino is a hack.There, I said it. Deal with it.So he gets lucky with one film, The Deer Hunter - having great actors like De Niro, Steep and Walken doesn't hurt. But Desperate Hours is like a High School film project - only worse.It is terribly put together with jump cuts, poor camera angles and perspective, terrible continuity, poor story, time-frame mismanagement, unbelievable plot holes and poor characters.The action sequences are a joke too. For example, one minute you have squads of highly trained and armed professionals who literally can't shoot the bad guys right in front of them with automatic weapons. Then a couple of scenes later said professionals now all have red-dot sights all over bad guys and can shoot with pinpoint accuracy - all in the very same location as the scene before. Stupefying.I could go on and on with the problems in many scenes but I have better things to do. Like count the number of piles in my living room carpet.Bottom line: Desperate Hours is one of those movies that's so bad it becomes an unintentional comedy.

mindcat This 1990 flick is not only unbelievable it is NUTS from start to finish.Lets see in acting- Very poor and I hated every characterPlot was so stupid it should have been burned as a screen Play before it got started.Dumb and misplaced scenes that are exaggerated and just none sense. For example the playing of the Red River valley and so sort of ploy to make the audience feel sorry for the creep the the cops shot in the river.By the way, the best cinema was not the movie, rather the Nature scenes with the wild horses.Everything about this sad flick tells me its director and the actors have finished their careers.Just terrible, so if you want awful, get this as a 2.00 DVD and laugh at it, that's all its good for.