Chasers is a 1994 comedy about a hapless Navy grunt who is assigned to help escort a prisoner on his last day of duty.
Some films just age well. Either by themes or direction, performances or subject, these movies become timeless icons of the media. You’ve got your Citizen Kane‘s, your Gone With The Wind‘s, your E.T.‘s, your Dumb and Dumber‘s … I mean do I need to make list? However, most simply do not, ending up relics of a time they were made or just bad from the start, perhaps hoping to cash in on a trend or hot star of the minute. Pretty much pick any movie with a singer in the lead and you get the jist, with obvious exceptions to Prince, David Bowie, Cher, Barbra Streisand, Ice-Cube, Eminem, Frank Sinatra – geesh, hold on. That might be a bad example. Okay then. Not all singers. Just one or two.
Anyway. With legendary actor/director Dennis Hopper‘s 1994 Chasers, it’s very much what I was saying about the second thing – the relic of time and bad from the start thing. You kinda sorta get what it’s going for, and maybe somewhere along the way, have a moment where you think, ‘sure, that might make sense,’ but most likely you’ll be staring slack-jawed at the screen wondering how the heck did this ever get made, realizing probably well too late that it was for one reason only: the girl.
THE STORY: So here’s the deal. Eddie Devane (William McNamara) is a criminal (Well, he’s actually a sailor in the United States Navy, but mostly, yes, he’s a criminal). During his time in uniform, he’s been running a number of very successful scams with his partner Howard (Crispin Glover) that have skimmed off portions of the military branch’s inventory, such as clothing and such. Not only that, he’s kept most of the profits of his scams secret, hiding wads of cash in his desk so he can buy a fully-loaded Porsche and ride off into the sunset as tomorrow is his last day in service. What’s more, he’s cocky, arrogant, and sautners through the office smacking all the female Naval personnel on the rear, offering them stolen flowers, and promises of sexual favors, to which they all woo and coo in giggly, heated anticipation. Remember, it’s 1994. But yeah, it’s revolting. Even back then.
Thinking he’ll sail (hey, a pun!) through the day, he instead gets one more mission. He’s to serve as additional escort for the grumpy an gruff Chief Petty Officer Rock Reilly (Tom Berenger), a master-at-arms Shore Patrolman who often works in prisoner transport. Their job? Do just that, pick up a baddie and bring him to the Naval stockade to begin serving their time. Seems easy enough. But…
Once at the jail, they learn that the “Tony Johnson” they were meant to pick up is actually “Toni Johnson” (Erika Eleniak), a beautiful blonde girl in perfect makeup and salon-ready hair. Can these two men, who are already at each other’s throats, get her to the church on time per se without falling prey to her wily feminine ways? Not to spoil it but, well, no. Definitely no.
OFF THE RAILS: So let’s just briefly deal with Howard. Remember him? He’s Eddie’s cohort in the pants scam. I’m almost literally devoting more time to him writing this sentence than the film does in its entirety, and don’t forget, we’re talking about Crispin Glover here. Crispin Freakin‘ Glover.
The whole point of this scheme is too sort of give Eddie a rebellious edge, something done far better with Richard Gere‘s Zack Mayo in An Officer and a Gentleman, the difference here being that Eddie is out-an-out breaking the law. Yes, that’s meant to align him more with Toni, whose ‘crime’ I’ll get to in a moment, but this is a thread that ends with (and spoilers … is that possible on a 24-year-old movie?) Howard stealing the Porsche and Eddie facing no consequences … and getting the girl … and money … and a posh life ‘somewhere south of the border.’ Cool. Crime does pay.
Poor Howard really should have been completely excised from the script and no one would have cared, but okay, you’re right, that’s a minor bit and I should move on. Also, why am I not talking more about Erika Eleniak?
Erika Eleniak. She’s a former Baywatch girl and Playboy Playmate who earned a bit of notoriety for her blink or you’ll miss it but highly memorable role as the little girl Elliot kisses amid the escaping frogs in E.T. She’s adorable. Then a decade later, the adorable noticeably, um, blossomed, and movie audiences got to see a whole lot more of the now grown beauty in Steven Seagal‘s Under Siege when she pops out of a cake and … promptly bares all, the movie’s most rewound and freeze-framed moment (I’m guessing some of you have a second tab open and are Googling it now). A year later, she earned some acclaim for her acting skills as Elly May Clampett in The Beverly Hillbillies, a remake of the beloved television series of the 60s. No one paused that one.
So Toni’s crime is an emotional one. Turns out she went AWOL to visit her brother who was in a detox hospital for drug addiction, and then got into more trouble when she tried multiple escapes and assault while resisting. And then, he died while she was in jail, so she’s pretty upset. This is played seriously for exactly thirty-seven seconds (Timed it) on a driving range where they are soon under fire from incoming golf balls and a man in a caged tractor shooing them away.
The crux of the film is a road movie, the three traveling about in a dilapidated van that Rock has a kind of love-hate relationship with. Like most road movies, it drives us along to various opportunities for interesting things to happen, except Chasers forgot the second part of the formula and committed mostly to the driving part. For example, the van breaks down after Rock takes a shortcut through desert because duh … which soon has them walking and then standing in a perfect line over a dried up oil well rigging that collapses under their shoes, dropping them twenty feet to their deaths on the rocks below. Er wait, no, that would make sense. Instead, they dropping to a heap where they end up in their underwear to get out, the camera lovingly lingering on Toni in her thong cut panties. If you’re thinking that kinda of could be funny. Stop it.
Later on, in a motel, Rock, a seasoned SP officer with decades of experience falls asleep next a connected room where a girl who has already escaped twice from them lies down handcuffed to a bed next to an open window. Fortunately for her, Eddie thinks only with one head and after some booze, promptly falls to her obvious trickery and has sweaty sex with her, removing the cuffs because, if you’re going to have sex with a hot criminal, why would you ever want to keep the restraints on?
Either way, here is the freeze-frame rewind moment in Chasers, and probably the only reason the film had any success after release. Once again, Eleniak strips to her naughty bits in a lengthy sex scene that is soft-core-y enough to get past any ratings trouble and ludicrous enough to fit perfectly into a film that has spent a good portion of its budget in maxing out its nonsense credit.
That’s reductionist of course. The movie tries to create a believable explanation for how and why these two young people fall for each other, and with a genuinely good actor like Berenger doing what he can with dreadful dialogue and empty story arcs, at least there’s some level of honesty to it. It’s just that the film is a bore. It’s a wholly unfunny collection of endless tropes and entirely unconvincing scenarios that leave this mess a vapid archaic lumbering dinosaur of an experience.
Most aggravating is the message. Skipping the awful portrayal of women – yes, Toni is resourceful and motivated but is tethered by the male gaze so often she devoid of any empowerment – and the only other woman is a cameo by Marilu Henner as a sexed up waitress with a hots for men in uniform, it rewards Eddie for his constant foul (and criminal) behavior and paints him like some sort of hero. If you watch this, you’ll be constantly wondering why you would ever want to root for him.
I like a good romp now and then, and a goofy comedy is a fun place to get a little. However, Hopper, who shows up for a moment wearing a bulbous nose prosthetic as a seedy lingerie salesman in a convertible Cadillac trying to get Toni in his undies, wholly misses the mark here. With a whimsical yet strangely generic twangy score by country singer Dwight Yoakam and loads of potential pratfalls, the film stumbles about in the dark without a single solitary laugh. Brief appearances by Seymour Cassel and Gary Busey are spirited but you get the sense quickly that this was nothing more than a weekend with a gang of friends doing favors in a film that thuds hard by the end. This chase is over before it starts.