1993's The Chase is what the average movie should be: an 88-minute car chase with stunts, laughs, romance, and nothing else. Only senior citizens even remember when Charlie Sheen was a meme, but long before then, in the 90s, he was a sort-of actor with a gift for deadpan that rivalled what the TV Troper neckbeards and Daria stans at your old high school earnestly believed they had. This gift paid off in '92's Top Gun parody Hot Shots!, but his finest hour was still to come.
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| It's not easy to be deadpan when you're dressed like Pogo the Clown. |
Sheen plays Jack, an escaped convict on the run, who kidnaps a young heiress played by fellow Hot Shots! alum Kristy Swanson, hijacking her BM in a desperate bid to flee to the border, little guessing that this will excite the wrath of her billionaire father, Ray Wise (Dead End).
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| Least wet woman being kidnapped (trust me). |
This completes the plot summary. Doubtless inspired by Cops and the popularity of high speed chases on the TV news, The Chase has Sheen and Swanson dogged by a succession of whacky police, news media and thrill seekers that seem tailor-written* for cameos by whatever famous names the producers had run into the other week and were like "hell yeah brother, I'm down", because that's the sort of vibe that permeates the movie.
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| I've been told these are the Red Hot Chili Peppers. |
A well-balanced movie diet consists in equal parts of populist, contrarian and snob fare. In the game of rock-paper-scissors between the three, lowbrow populist entertainment done right beats would-be Important Cinema, and scarcely is it done better than in The Chase.
*Written by a tailor.
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