Two-Minute Warning (1976)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

An action-packed slog

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

In the first 45 minutes, there is nothing. Just total vacuum. And to tell you the truth, there is no action unless in the last 10 minutes ! I swear to you, I've played hide and seek that was more thrilling than this. In fact, every hide and seek anybody played is more thrilling that this !! The movie has the most unnecessary characters in the history of cinema. They are so boring, with plenty of dialog, and nowhere to go to. There is a guy who likes the girl of another guy in the dullest romantic comedy ever made. A quarterback who's a friend of a priest, though looks gaily to him (!). And Walter Pidgeon. Wait. What ?! Walter Pidgeon was in this ?? What he was doing exactly ??.. Well, in brief, this is incoherence at its best !The idea of not identifying the sniper is a joke. It's the top of comedy indeed when everyone in the movie doesn't know a thing about the killer, and the killer himself doesn't speak. I didn't feel artistic abstraction, I felt absolute laziness ! And why the heck they hided his face ? Is it a horror tactic similar to the one used with the shark in Jaws (1975) one year earlier ?? However, Mr. Jaws was a respectable "evil guy", at least he occasionally KILLED PEOPLE !! There are a handful of frankly stupid scenes. For instance, the father wants his son to get a haircut, and tells him "I warned you!!" The question isn't who wrote this ? it's why to write it ?? The stupidity continues yet on the level of the events. Just think of it; in the movie's start, John Cassavetes used a tear gas bomb to catch some criminal. OK. Why he didn't use the same bomb with the stadium's sniper during the whole time of the movie ?? That would have ended the situation peacefully without casualties, and very early too. See how this movie is stupid, and hands over to you the very reason of its stupidity !Since the movie is a lesson of nothingness, they tried to add some "satire" to it through a line said by Cassavetes in the end, commenting on the media and its way of reversing the truth. But even this try failed. Because there was no rooting for any anti-media message from the start. It's not a problem to not have a substance; but it's a tragedy to have a forced one ! In terms of last minute substance, maybe the movie was imitating the near disaster hit The Towering Inferno (1974), which put a resembling line in its last scene, yet concerning the human's vanity. However, it was more harmonizing there. Even a potential substance in Two-Minute Warning (1976), like how the VIPs, or the guys in the suits, are more important than the ordinary people; didn't have any kind of underlining either.I don't want to belittle the cast, since this movie did it perfectly. The one "acting" remark I found in my notebook after the movie ended said : "John Cassavetes and Charlton Heston are highly charismatic. Though the first had something close to a character, and the second seemed needing the money desperately" ! The music was mostly awful. Take for example the sniper's theme. As if it wasn't bad enough to look like endless monotonous knocks on a door; so they had to repeat it, time after time after time, in such an irritating way too ! Yet, I didn't understand how this movie was nominated for the academy award for the best editing in 1976 ?? It really makes you sad for 1976 movies, and how ugly their editing was, to end up with nominating THIS! By the way, if there was any "editing" in this movie, it should have deleted at least 45 minutes !The cinematography was the sole positive point. It managed to be smooth and grand.I didn't watch the infamous TV version to date; where Universal removed half of the cinematic version, and replaced it with new footage. But adding a story-line about a group of thieves who plan to steal priceless paintings, using the stadium's sniper as a decoy for them—sounded like a good rewriting that wanted to rectify what was done hastily in the first time. Two-Minute Warning is empty and absurd movie that aches you while the viewing. It's traditional in Hollywood that the disaster movie has no drama. It has the disaster only. This time, astoundingly, there is no drama, or disaster in the first place ! ..It's clear that most of Hollywood genre movies in the 1970s were the real "disaster" !

I'm not sure why this film is rated so low on IMDb. Maybe it's just considered hip to do so, or it's just people following the crowd.This is actually an excellent thriller! And, what makes it so good is the dispassionate way it goes about its story telling. Its characters are cool in temperament, doing their jobs carefully and surgically, lending a great deal of authenticity to the high concept: A sniper has taken position to fire on unknown patrons at a Super-Bowl-type game.This approach extends to the chilling finale, which you will have to see for yourself. It is impressive and spectacular. And, the ending is unique from a character perspective.The film is made very well, from direction to script to acting. And, the crew does very well too, including cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld, who especially mounts some awesome images in the finale. And, Charles Fox, who comes up with a chilling, dissonant theme of sorts for the sniper, and shows excellent judgment in when to provide score and when to not.This thriller is recommended for those who love taught, realistic, albeit violent, films.********* (9 Out of 10 Stars)

Two-Minute Warning is a typically sprawling 1970s disaster flick that is decidedly untypical in its explosive brutality and cold remorselessness. It's like a fusion of The Towering Inferno and the original Assault on Precinct 13 or The Poseidon Adventure and the original The Last House on the Left. Death and destruction are a staple of the genre, but I'm not sure any other disaster film of its era presented the audience with such shocking and disconcerting carnage.The story is set in what is clearly meant to be the Super Bowl but is referred to as "Championship Ten", and we're introduced to a large cast of characters at the big game. There's Charlie Tyler (Joe Kapp), the aging quarterback looking for one last moment of glory. There's Sam McKeever (Martin Balsam), head of the stadium where everything happens. Steve and Janet (David Janssen and Gena Rowlands) are a pair of squabbling, middle aged cohabitators who've flown into Los Angeles to watch their hometown team try and win it all. Mike Ramsay (Beau Bridges) is a man out of work who's taking his family to the game to try and forget all his troubles. An old pickpocket (Walter Pidgeon) and his pretty, young partner (Julie Bridges) show up at the stadium to steal as much as they can. An inveterate gambler (Jack Klugman) who has literally bet his life on the outcome of the championship winds up sitting next to a priest (Mitch Ryan) who's an old friend of Charlie Tyler. A beautiful woman (Marilyn Hassett) who got lassoed into attending the game winds up sitting next to a charming stranger (David Groh). And then there's police captain Peter Holly (Charlton Heston) and SWAT sergeant Button (John Cassavetes), two men who have to overcome their mutual distrust and resentment to try and keep everyone alive.That's because there's one more person at "Championship Ten" who really shouldn't be there. He's a deranged sniper with a high-powered rifle. This man (Warren Miller) is a mystery. It 's never clear why he's there or what he wants, only that he could unleash murder, panic and mayhem at any moment.In one way, Two-Minute Warning is like every other disaster flick. I t establishes who all of its characters are and then flits back and forth between them, giving us a bit more of their individual stories as it does. There's nothing unusual about any of it, though it's done reasonably well.In two ways, however, this film is unlike any disaster movie I think I've ever seen.First, the build up to the disaster is stretched out to the breaking point. I n other films like this, the big event (fire, earthquake, etc.) happens in the first half of the story or at least by the middle. Everything after that is the characters having to deal with the crisis and overcome various deadly challenges. Two-Minute Warning takes that pacing and throws it out the window. For a long time, the audience are the only ones to know the sniper is in the stadium. When he's finally discovered by an errant TV camera, the tension just keeps building as the authorities try to figure out what to do and then move into position to do it. The disaster here happens almost at the very end of the movie. But trust me, it's more than worth the wait.Second, there's a viciousness to this catastrophe epic that is unlike the rest of the genre. People get killed in those films, but not like they get killed here. People are trapped in helpless situations, but not as unsettlingly helpless as they are here. There's a whiff of horror to the last 15 minutes of so of this movie that is starkly different from the uplifting conclusions disaster flicks normally strive to deliver.From what I gather, Two-Minute Warning was a box office bomb when it was released. The movie-going public of 1976 apparently didn't find mass murder at the Super Bowl an appealing concept. That's a shame, because there's some gripping, nerve-wracking cinema on display here. It's hard and sharp and well worth watching.

Saw this really late last night on one of the Cinemax channels. I'm a sucker for 1970's films plus it had John Cassavettes so I needed to see it. I thought it was suspenseful, probably resonated more today due to the recent execution of the Beltway Sniper.Anyway, comments I wanted to make was a couple of items made me chuckle. For one, the QB for the Los Angeles team, am I remembering right and it was Lloyd Braun? Same name as the character from Seinfeld. If it was, could it really be a coincidence.Plus the scene where the loan shark thugs hang Klugman out the window...classic.