Nails (1992)

Truly Dreadful Film

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

A contract is put out on hard-boiled police homicide detective Harry 'Nails' Niles (Dennis Hopper) and his partner Jack Willis. Nails survives an ambush but Willis is killed. With vengeance on his mind, Nails searches the L.A. underworld to find Willis' murderers. In between, he has sexual escapades with his ex Mary (Anne Archer).John Flynn is a B-level crime action director. Nails is a standard hard-boiled detective. He's hard drinking, hard driving, and hard fighting. While Hopper is great at the hard drinking and living, he's not as real in the hard fighting. He's in his 50's but the hard living adds at least another 10 years. There are things that he does well and others that fit less well. There is the prerequisite body double nudity for Archer and also there is old man butt from Hopper. The plot has nothing out of the ordinary. It is somewhat divided in two which feels disconnected. The dialogue can be clunky in its noir writing. This is crime noir at its hard-boiled basic level. I really wish the cinematography is better.

Its every single cop movie cliche in existence...but Dennis Hopper is pure entertainment here. The plot is Hopper's trying to get the guys who kill his partner in the first five minutes of the movie. There's apparently a hundred plus bad guys that Hopper has to go thru in order to find the responsible party. Along the way, you get to see Hopper do thinks like: he puts a bad guy's head into a big huge bowl of shrimp that he's gobbling down, at another point he runs to catch a bad guy who's climbed onto the back of an escaping truck and of course Hopper catches him and pulls him off the truck and beats the crap out of him. Oh and there's the scene where attacked by drive by gunfire while in the bathtub with his dog Hopper grabs his gun and runs out of his house after the bad guy while stark raving nude. (shrugs) I had fun watching it. Its a very enjoyable hour and a half if you like Hopper. (and who doesn't like Hopper come on now!!!) Also Keith David is in it and the end credits song is by Eddie Money! How can you go wrong??? You can't--He's Nails!!!!

In the post-The Wire world we now dwell in, we are forced to look upon the action/cop thrillers of the 1980's and early 1990's with somewhat fresh eyes. We now understand how a city is run, and how bureaucracy and politics can stand in the way of, say, the police force, getting their job done. No longer can a leather-jacketed, cocktail-stick chewing cop- on-the-edge cast aside the need of a search warrant and simply kick the door down. It used to be that as long as he drags out his man either in cuffs or in a body bag, and saves the girl, nobody will care about his disregard for the law, and if they don't, I quote Rambo, "f**k 'em!". But the enlightenment set by The Wire causes something like Nails, a made-for-TV, obscure little title probably forgotten by whoever has actually seen it, to fall from 'terrible' or 'run-of-the-mill', to 'outright laughable' due to it's complete lack of procedural logic and sense.'Good cop with a bad attitude' Harry 'Nails' Niles (Dennis Hopper) and his partner Jack (Earl Billings) are lured into a trap by some gangsters, leaving Jack dead and Harry mourning. Getting no help from his police department, of which none attend Jack's funeral, Harry decides to use his street know-how to scour the criminal underworld of L.A. in search of vengeance. He discovers a dirty trail full of conspiracy and possible police cover-up that seems to lead all the way up to rich slumlord Noah Owens (Keith David), who is helping fund a Senator's campaign run. Battling alcoholism and a very bad temper, he must also try and win back his estranged ex-wife Mary (Anne Archer) before the gangsters get to her too.I would probably have never even been aware of this film's existence had it not been for the poster in some cinema magazine or other back in 1992. My brother and I remembered it due to the hilarious title and equally hilarious tagline, so the temptation to actually go ahead and watch this proved too much. It's not quite as bad as I was expecting, given Hopper's energetic, but hardly convincing, performance at least managing to keep me half-interested. Common in early 90's movies, the technical aspects of the film are dreadful, and the action scenes are dull, with a few car chases and machine gun fights scattered throughout. It's so full of plot holes and weird narrative twists (Harry is paying his ex-wife, who is an important member of the Senator's campaign trail, for sex) that is best experienced on full mental shut-down, or else you're in danger of throwing things at the screen. Befitting of its obscurity, and a reminder of how bad the 90's really were.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Dennis Hopper is properly designated as a film personality rather than as an actor because he essentially plays himself, regardless of role requirements, and as with most performers of that type, Hopper is seldom able to rise above the quality of his material; therefore, when a production is as poorly written as in this instance, it can be no surprise that his showing is preordained to be awkward, at best. As action opens, a contract hit is being arranged to dispose of veteran Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective Harry "Nails" Niles and his partner Jack, and while it is never explained why, it is possibly not worth knowing and, soon after, the two whiskey swilling (while on duty) lawmen are uncannily duped into an ambush which they stupidly abet by not requesting assistance, Jack thereby being gunned down. This naturally disturbs Niles who, still in clothing saturated with Jack's blood, meets with his estranged wife (Anne Archer) for a session of role playing sex, after which he grimly proceeds to locate his ex-partner's killer, additionally discovering in the process a large-scale heroin smuggling operation, and whereas his investigative methods are brutal, there is no longer a question of their appropriateness, due to his suspension from duty. Shot atmospherically by cinematographer Mac Ahlberg in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, and smoothly edited by Michael Knue, the film's screenplay reveals a complete lack of knowledge regarding policing procedures along with wholesale failings in logic, and while many of the supporting cast are clearly enjoying their turns, acting honours go to Cuban Tomas Milian as a detective nearing retirement cajoled into aiding Niles, an ably created part but not nearly enough to save this poorly directed and scripted affair.