Rating: 
Summary: CULT MOVIES 14
Review: 14. DEAD BANG (action, 1989) Detective Jerry Beck (Don Johnson) is a LA cop whose life is falling to pieces. His wife has just left him so he drowns himself in liquor and despair. Because of his volatile nature he has been restricted to see his kids and slapped with a violence order. Assigned to a cop killing that seems routine, Beck sees his chance at redemption by immersing himself in the case. His dogged pursuit uncovers that the murder has ties to a ruthless and tightly controlled Neo-Nazi sect. He starts a cross-country chase that inevitably leads him to rural America. With the help of a FBI agent (and the local police) Beck intents on proving his up Don Johnson's acting. With a squeaky (almost childish) voice, boyish looks, and sparse acting (plus an endless array of 'cool' wardrobes), he became something of a cult favorite playing Det. Stubbs in the hit TV-show Miami Vice (1984-89). Since the end of that show, his movie career has been a total loss. . .well, almost. At least he can look back proudly on his (literally) action film. Taking his Stubbs character to new heights (or lows for that matter) he plays the consummate 'burn-out cop'. He has been given a great script to work from, professional direction by old-hand Frankenheimer, and a good supporting cast including John Forsythe. Based on the real life experiences of LA Det. Jerry Beck, this is Johnson's only "I got a splittin' headache, I'm seeing double and. . .I think I'm gonna throw up again.
Rating:
Summary: Underrated Frankenheimer Film
Review: Dead Bang is an exceptional cop film from a great director. John Frankenheimer created a nice, engaging film here. I may be biased because I'm a Don Johnson fan, but I also love cop films so I know what I'm saying. Willim Forsythe and Don Johnson are both good in this, but Penelope Ann Miller is wasted. The plot may be a little cliche , but it gets the job done. If you liked this, I recommend Seven Days In May, The Train and French Connection 2 for other great Frankenheimer films.
Rating: 
Summary: "For one cop this isn't just a case, it's a war"
Review: I bought this DVD at a sale at my local video store last week because a) It was cheap. b) I hadn't seen it before. c) Being a Frankenheimer movie I had moderate expectations that this movie would be halfway decent & d) The plot actually sounded quite interesting. John Frankenheimer has made some very good movies throughout his long career as a Hollywood director among them THE TRAIN (1964) SECONDS (1966) BLACK SUNDAY (1977) & RONIN (1998). He's also made movies where "awful" seems too nice a word to describe them. Among these of course we have PROPHECY(1979) ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (1996) & in between those two there is Frankenheimer's 1989 movie DEAD BANG.
Don Johnson plays Detective Jerry Beck, a down and out cop who refuses to play by the rules and is disliked by his peers, whose latest case involves him running up against a gang of white supremacists. The movies script by Robert Foster is basically a blueprint of cop movie clichés. There's one minor problem: Jerry Beck is NOT a fictional character. In fact, the real Jerry Beck receives a co-credit for the story.
The movie is despite being barely 100 minutes long seems drawn out and boring. It also goes some way towards showing why Johnson couldn't make the leap from TV to the big screen successfully: For cryin' out loud when you accept scripts like DEAD BANG and HARLEY DAVIDSON AND THE MARLBORO MAN (Which was a reasonable sized hit on video. God knows why.), you're literally ASKING to be sent up Poo Creek without a paddle career-wise, aren't you? Getting jiggy with Melanie Griffith won't win you good parts (though Charles Fleming`s book "High Concept: Don Simpson And The Hollywood Culture Of Excess" would have us believe otherwise.) However as with all bad movies there are a couple of standout scenes: the scene where Beck rubs a Woody Allen look-alike the wrong way and hurts his feelings & of course the bravura scene where Johnson is shown throwing up on a suspect. You wouldn't see The Rock or Vin Diesel doing that!
DEAD BANG sticks out like a sore thumb in my DVD collection along with other anomalies (just my opinion) like TRUE STORIES and STAR 80. Movies that I found had interesting ideas but dullness and/or pretension and/or poor execution left me with stinging eyeballs and the formation of thick cobwebs in the dense black space where my brain should be. But having said that the movie isn't complete garbage but apart from the aforementioned scenes it doesn't add anything new to the genre that makes it stand out from the pack.
Rating:
Summary: Dirty Lethal Don
Review: I don't know what provoked Don Johnson to use his spare time from "Miami Vice" to take part in this fairly repellant film. He should have fired his agent. His Detective Jerry Beck character is one of the more unsavory protagonists to ever grace the silver screen. When Beck vomits on a perp you get the feeling that the only place "Dead Bang" has to go is up. The only thing that redeems Beck is that he is allegedly better than the cartoonish white-supremacists that he is tailing. The film also wastes the talents of Tim Reid as a sherriff, William Forsythe as an uptight FBI agent,Michael Jeter as a police psychiatrist who Beck intimidates, and Penelope Ann Miller whose sole purpose in the film is to share a perfunctory bedroom scene with Johnson. About the only thing that redeems this film is that director John Frankenheimer stages a fairly decent showdown scene with the supremacists in the catacombs of an Aryan church.
Rating:
Summary: A "Dead" Movie That Doesn't Go Out With A "Bang"
Review: I first saw this film in a theater on a double bill with Alan Parker's "Mississippi Burning." John Frankenheimer's "Dead Bang" is simply another forgettable action movie.Cop Don Johnson goes after a group of neo-Nazis. "Dead Bang" is one of Frankenheimer's more inferior movies. As a Frankenheimer film, "Dead Bang" isn't as poor as "99 and 44/100% Dead" and "The Holcroft Covenant" but that isn't saying a whole lot; Frankenheimer hasn't made one great movie since "Black Sunday." This film came out during the last season of Don Johnson's TV show "Miami Vice" and Johnson basically just plays Sonny Crockett on the big screen. "Dead Bang" has a few good action sequences but this one element can't save the film. The film isn't particularly exciting or interesting. In one particularly crude and unnecessary sequence, a cop is shown vomiting on a suspect. Like William Friedkin and Brian DePalma, Frankenheimer is a once great director who lost his edge. I am sad that the director of such brilliant movies as "The Manchurian Candidate" and "The Birdman of Alcatraz" has fallen to making crass movies like "Dead Bang." "Dead Bang" is nothing more than a foul-mouthed and forgettable action movie. The film is only for big Don Johnson fans and those who merely want to see violent action.
Rating:
Summary: A "Dead" Movie That Doesn't Go Out With A "Bang"
Review: I first saw this film in a theater on a double bill with Alan Parker's "Mississippi Burning." John Frankenheimer's "Dead Bang" is simply another forgettable action movie. Cop Don Johnson goes after a group of neo-Nazis. "Dead Bang" is one of Frankenheimer's more inferior movies. As a Frankenheimer film, "Dead Bang" isn't as poor as "99 and 44/100% Dead" and "The Holcroft Covenant" but that isn't saying a whole lot; Frankenheimer hasn't made one great movie since "Black Sunday." This film came out during the last season of Don Johnson's TV show "Miami Vice" and Johnson basically just plays Sonny Crockett on the big screen. "Dead Bang" has a few good action sequences but this one element can't save the film. The film isn't particularly exciting or interesting. In one particularly crude and unnecessary sequence, a cop is shown vomiting on a suspect. Like William Friedkin and Brian DePalma, Frankenheimer is a once great director who lost his edge. I am sad that the director of such brilliant movies as "The Manchurian Candidate" and "The Birdman of Alcatraz" has fallen to making crass movies like "Dead Bang." "Dead Bang" is nothing more than a foul-mouthed and forgettable action movie. The film is only for big Don Johnson fans and those who merely want to see violent action.
Rating: 
Summary: YOU HAVEN'T A CLUE
Review: I HAVE GIVEN UP WITH THE MAY I SAY CRIDITS ON THIS SITE. ONE, A MOVIE IS FOR ENJOYMENT. DON'T TEAR IT APART BECAUSE YOU DON'T LIKE PAN AND SCAN OR IT'S NOT BELIVEABLE. I HAVE THIS DVD ANDIT'S A GOOD MOVIE IF YOU FOLLOW THE STORY. IS IT THE ROCK, NO. IS IT IN THE LINE OF FIRE, NO, BUT IT BLOWS AWAY BANDITS WHICH I BOUGHT BECAUSE OF THIS SITE. I'M DONE LOOKING AT YOUR RATINGS BECAUSE MOST OF YOU DON'T HAVE LIVES AND NEED TO RATE MOVIES. XXX WAS TERRIFIC, MUDER AT 1600 WAS GREAT, THE FIRST PETER SELLERS MOVIE SUCKED AS DID OTHERS. ALL I'M SAYING IS, YOU THINK VANDAME IS A FIVE STAR, THAT STRIPES IS VERY FUNNY, THAT AIRPLANE IS FUNNY, AND THAT BANDITS IS GREAT. YOU SHOULD SEE SOMEONE BECAUSE YOU HAVE A PROBLEM AND PEOPLE WILL FOLLOW THESE RATINGS TO RENT OR TO BUY. DEAD BANG IS A FUNNY, ACTION PACKED MOVIE. A B MOVIE YUP, BUT TO ME GREAT ENTERTAINMENT. IT DOESNOT HAVE TO BE REAL LIFE OR PROVE ANYTHING TO BE ENTERTAINING. GET A LIFE PEOPLE!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: No new ground covered here
Review: In a constant effort to expand my collection of action flicks, I decided to give 'Dead-Bang' a view. While it ain't a half-bad "lone-wolf-cop-on-a-mission-and-God-help-anybody-who-gets-in-his-way" type movie, the sheer volume of the usual clichés, stereotypical supporting characters, and hackneyed situations borders on the ludicrous. For a start, you've got Don Johnson playing Beck, a divorced alcoholic cop who prefers to work alone and doesn't like to go by the rules. Sounds like a familiar character (or combo of characters) don't it? But wait, there's more: we can't forget the usual folks the lone wolf cop who doesn't like to play by the rules will hafta deal with on his way to gettin' the job done, right? This lineup of familiar anal-retentives include: - An annoyingly buttoned-down & arrogant FBI agent (played a bit too stiffly by William Forsythe) who goes by-the-book at all times and tries to grab all the glory for Beck's hard work. - A ludicrously complacent small-town sheriff who thinks he can handle the situation in spite of Beck's insistence that he's overmatched. Needless to say, the yokel suddenly and almost fatally gets his comeuppance when he and several deputies get caught in the bad guys' ambush. - A police captain who is on one hand sympathetic towards Beck's plight, but on the other hand is also concerned for the department's image and wants his underling to tone things down. - A super-geeky & bureaucratic police shrink called in to evaluate the Beck's mental state, who is coerced by Beck into giving him a favorable evaluation. Then there's the band of white supremacists Beck is after, which might lead one to believe the movie will actually tackle the topic of organized racism in a meaningful way... NOT! Throw in the obligatory boink scene, foot-chase scene, and a slight twist at the climax that wasn't all that twisty, and you've got the cop-cinema equivalent of acute déjà vu. Though I must admit Beck's method of puking-on-a-perp method of questioning is a fairly novel if disgusting addition to the action. If nothing more, 'Dead-Bang' is worth a rent if you've already checked out every other semi-decent tape on your local Hollywood Video's Action/Adventure shelf... 'Late
Rating:
Summary: Workmanlike but hardly distinguished
Review: The problem with this film (as well as most of John Frankenheimer's output since the late '70s) is that, while there isn't anything particularly wrong with it, there also isn't much of anything special about it. It's workmanlike, nothing more. That's especially sad when you consider how great his films used to be (see THE TRAIN, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, SECONDS, BLACK SUNDAY, FRENCH CONNECTION II, or even 52 PICK-UP). Don Johnson gives a decent enough performance in a roll that is essentially a cardon copy of his cop from "Miami Vice" (DEAD-BANG came out toward the end of that show's run). He's not a bad actor when he gets the right role and this one doesn't tax his limited abilities. The only real interest here comes from the quirky supporting cast, including Bob Balaban as an uptight parole officer, William Forsythe as a spit-and-polish FBI goon, and Michael Jeter as a psychiatrist who's a dead ringer for Woody Allen. The rest of the actors are pretty much wasted in nothing roles (Penelope Ann Miller shows up for a pointless walk-on role in a sub-plot that goes nowhere). If made today, this one probably would have been a USA Network made-for-TV movie. It's passable and inoffensive but not much else.
Rating:
Summary: Better Could Be
Review: There's very good message in this film but the script is too simpel. The end isn't surprising. The actors are not so good. I wanted to stop this film many times because it was so boring.
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