POSSIBLE SPOILERS
I have held my fair share of jobs
over the years, but to the best of my recollection, there was only one boss I
ever had that I just didn’t get along with.
Maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but even when I was toiling away
in the grill area of a local McDonald’s (a job from which I was expunged for
reasons I won’t get into today, but no, it has nothing to do with contaminating
food or equipment with my body parts or bodily fluids, so relax), I got along fairly
well with my superiors. Anyway, the guy
I didn’t get along with was a manager at a supermarket where I worked as a
bagger during high school and part of college.
I couldn’t stand being a bagger (and if you ever were one, I think you
understand where I’m coming from), and I wanted to be a stocker. Man, those guys sure had the life (from my
perspective then). So, every time that I
asked this guy if I could get to be in said lofty department, I was told in no
uncertain terms that I didn’t have “the eye of the tiger.” Let’s never mind that it was a job stocking
fucking supermarket shelves, not competing in a decathlon. This is like being picked last for dodgeball
(a game I was actually pretty good at) or football (a game I was abysmal at),
and it consistently elicits a response from me of, “are you fucking
kidding?” If memory serves, I may have
even said that when told about my substandard stock boy potential (most likely
minus the expletive). Consequently, I
never jibed with this Type A jerkoff of a supervisor (am I being unfair? You bet).
It doesn’t bother me so much today, but it is something that stuck with
me. Whether that’s because of his
conflation of stock boy status with being chosen for NASA’s space program or my
bewilderment at his asinine statement, I couldn’t say (and if I’m being totally
honest with myself, I think he actually denied me due to my part time status at
the store). But whenever I think of the
cliché police captain chewing the ass out of his subordinates in films, like Alun Armstrong’s Thrasher does to Rutger Hauer’s Stone in Tony Maylam’s Split Second, I think of this relationship most adversarial, and
one young man’s crushed ambitions to arrange cans of cut green beans on a
grocery store’s shelves. I could’ve been
a contender.
Torrential rains have all but
submerged the futuristic London of…2008.
Maverick copper Harley Stone (who loves his first name so much he has
scads of Harley Davidson logos and
even a motorcycle in his apartment) is possessed by the ghost of a past failure
and the unseen killer who orchestrated it.
Out of the blue, the murderer, who rips his victims’ hearts out and eats
them, reappears, and Stone knows that his nightmare won’t end until this madman
(or mad thing) is brought down.
One of the strongest elements of
this film is the concept that Stone and the monster share a psychic
connection. Stone can feel when the
creature is around, and he can even tell if someone else has seen it (a child,
a dog, et cetera). Nevertheless, it
brings him no closer to capturing it.
All it does is places him in proximity to where the thing is. If there is more to their symbiosis, we are
never made privy to this information visually, which is disappointing since
Stone tells his partner Dick (Alastair
Duncan) that he “sees things” (and this is, after all, a visual
medium). It’s a great set-up, but I
don’t feel that it was utilized quite as well as it could have been. I also liked that said link was forged
through traumatic contact. Not only is
Stone scarred mentally by his past with the killer, he is also scarred
physically. This relationship is
represented by an almost constant heartbeat on the soundtrack, speeding up and
slowing down, and anyone injured by the beast can hear it (though this is only
addressed in an offhand comment). In
some way, this also gives the viewer some motivation for Stone’s obsession with
coffee and sugar. His vehicle is
littered with cardboard coffee cups and empty candy wrappers. Nonetheless, we are never told this is
because he feels the need to be alert every moment of the day now, or if it’s
simply some form of addiction he fell into after the tragic events that befell him,
or if it’s a replacement for the alcoholism he fell into after his partner’s
demise. At several points, we are shown
the toll these dietary habits have taken on Stone’s body, and we are lead to
expect this will be paid off by the end.
It isn’t. Sorry.
Hence, this was the big bone I
had to pick with the film. It has some
very strong concepts going on. It has a
great, biblical/religious angle. It has
a cop who is unhinged and truly eccentric.
It has a compelling game of cat and mouse between the hero and the villain. It has the idea of the bonding of villain and
victim/hero. It has a love interest (and
Kim Cattrall no less, who at least
does the audience the courtesy of getting naked a few times) where sparks
should absolutely be flying, considering their history. It has great production design and a lot of
production value onscreen. But it’s all
treated insouciantly. It’s all pissed
away almost as soon as it’s introduced.
Further, the film’s climax simply falls apart, with characters suddenly behaving
like completely different characters, rules being made up and discarded within
seconds (the inspiration for the film’s title, perhaps?), and a showdown
resolved with a facility that threatens to make utterly inconsequential the
time spent with the rest of the story.
Worse, the finale of the film, which should tie everything up and pay
off on all this (including finally giving us a decent glimpse of the killer; a
design which is pretty solid, considering the production stills I’ve seen),
doesn’t. Almost everything in the film
remains unexplained (I’m still unsure if this is a positive or a negative for
me), though several intriguing theories are floated here and there like smoke
rings. Most perplexing of all is that
the antagonist we are left to deal with at the finish simply doesn’t match the antagonist
that has been teased and built up for over an hour. One is an intelligent, devious, cruel psychopath. The other is (again, from what we’re shown)
nothing more than a blunt instrument (with really sharp claws). So, yes, Split
Second is most definitely a mess of a film.
However, I have to say that I did like it, and I would even recommend it
despite my grievances with it. True, it never
fully surmounts the humongous problems that it has. But it has an off-kilter charm that I
couldn’t resist, so even if I was ultimately letdown, I really enjoyed the ride,
so it all panned out. After all, it’s
not the fall the kills you. It’s the
sudden stop at the end.
MVT: Hauer does his damnedest playing (by turns) crazed, haunted, and
hardassed. And he mostly pulls it
off. If nothing else, I was always
interested to see what he would do next.
Make or Break: The scene
with the first kill Makes the film. It’s
graphic enough for gorehounds and intriguing enough to compel any audience through
the rest of the runtime. Plus, Rutger Hauer questioning a Rottweiler
is priceless.
Score: 6.75/10
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