By Michael Lyons
Guilty Pleasure Movies don’t feel guiltier than Two Minute Warning. Released 45 years ago and made at the height of Hollywood’s star-studded disaster movie fad, this thriller about a sniper at a professional football game plays like a dangerous version of TV’s The Love Boat and is immensely watchable.
Best of all, it’s also perfect viewing to add to movie watching that can help get one geared-up for The Super Bowl (putting out of your mind just how dangerous the movie’s melodramatic plot about a gunman truly is!),
Two Minute Warning opens as an unknown and faceless sniper positions himself at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where the “Championship X” game (generic substitute for The Super Bowl) is about to start. The sniper is soon spotted by a Goodyear blimp and the police and SWAT teams are both called.
So begins the macho showdown between Charlton Heston as the Police Chief and John Cassavetes as the SWAT Seargent. As they put their plan together during the game, we are introduced to the all-star parade of popular and character actors playing the fans and others at the stadium: Beau Bridges as a dad with his family in tow; David Janssen and Gena Rowlands (Cassavetes real-life wife) as an estranged couple; Jack Klugman as a gambler in trouble with the mob; Walter Pidgeon as a pickpocket; Brock Peters as the Stadium Maintenance Director and Martin Balsam as the Stadium Manager
As we cut back and forth between each of these stories throughout the film and the game unfurls, the police and SWAT teams prepare to go after the sniper (which they do at the game’s...two minute warning). The sniper then opens fire and the crowd panics, as everyone rushes to clear the stadium resulting in a bloody and frenetic conclusion to the film, that, sadly, seems more realistic today than the fictionalized action it was when Two Minute Warning was released 45 years ago.
Even at the time, the conclusion was deemed so intense that, when it was shown on network television three years after its release, newly filmed footage was inserted, including a sub-plot about an art heist, to allow for the more violent scenes to be excised.
Released on November 12, 1976, Two Minute Warning was helmed by Larry Peerce, a journeyman director who worked quite a bit in film and TV in the ‘70’s and here does a nice job balancing tension, action and even, at times, comedy,
Two Minute Warning, despite its serious subject matter, plays out at times like an innocent “time capsule” (complete with full-on ‘70’s fashion statements).
Like the buffalo wings, nachos and beer you’re about to gorge on Super Bowl Sunday, you’ll consume Two Minute Warning quickly and enjoy it...you may just feel incredibly guilty afterward.
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