Striking Distance (1993)

"Striking Distance" arrives from 1993 with the weary confidence of a film that was rewritten by its own star and reshot until the seams showed. Bruce Willis plays Tom Hardy, a Pittsburgh homicide detective demoted to river patrol after telling a reporter that the Polish Hill Strangler might be a cop. The river is atmospheric furniture. It carries bodies and boats and nothing resembling an environmental thesis, a conclusion reached after patient review of every barge.

The cast includes Andre Braugher and a river rescue colleague named Kim Lee, both of whom occupy the frame without the film pausing to remark upon them. That is the full extent of the picture's demographic curiosity. Sarah Jessica Parker's Jo Christman turns out to be an undercover state investigator named Emily Harper, which grants her a badge and a measure of professional standing before the plot reassigns her to the role of woman tied to a chair. This is not a film with a thesis. It has a serial killer, a corrupt uncle, and a taser.

We are dealing with a procedural that lectures no one, critiques no economy, and revises no history. The love scenes were reshot to be sexier, according to contemporary reporting, which reveals more about Columbia's marketing department than about any cultural program. Roger Ebert listed the clichés individually, which sounds exhausting, and he was right to be tired. The film opened at number one and then evaporated. It stands as a curious artifact: a star vehicle that treats its star as an auteur, a Pittsburgh postcard with a body count. We classify it without enthusiasm and without objection.