Trespass

A disappointing misfire, Trespass follows Arkansas firemen Vince (Bill Paxton) and Don (William Sadler) as they arrive at an abandoned factory in search of a supposed cache of stolen gold – with problems ensuing as the men find themselves caught in the middle of a gang-related execution. It’s the sort of premise that could (and should) have resulted in a hoary yet entertaining B-movie thriller, and yet Trespass, for the majority of its overlong running time, comes off as a wheel-spinning, padded-out failure that’s increasingly devoid of compelling elements – with the picture’s various problems compounded by the decidedly unpleasant nature of the central locale (ie that abandoned warehouse grows more and more claustrophobic as time progresses). Scripters Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (!) deliver a fairly uneventful (and palpably repetitive) narrative in which nothing terribly intriguing occurs, and it’s clear, too, that the movie suffers from a whole raft of underdeveloped, far-from-sympathetic characters (ie the viewer doesn’t have a rooting interest in the survival/success of any of these people) – which undoubtedly paves the way for a midsection that seems to consist entirely of these bland figures scheming with and shouting at one another. Hill’s inability to infuse the film’s many instances of action with any real excitement doesn’t help matters, surely, while the somewhat endless climax ensures that the whole thing ends on as underwhelming a note as one could possibly imagine – thus confirming Trespass‘ place as a justifiably-forgotten bit of 1990s filmmaking.

** out of ****