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.
