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I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that until now, I had not watched the movie SPLIT SECOND. Well, it was released on May 1, 1992, alongside LEAVING NORMAL and NIGHT ON EARTH. I suppose it could be classified as the first sci-fi or action film in terms of Weird Summer. This is part of that wonderful yet brief period in time when Rutger Hauer starred in action films, such as WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE, BLIND FURY, and THE BLOOD OF HEROES.
He plays Harley Stone, a dejected and worn out police homicide officer from London in the year 2008. The first line of the film is him exclaiming, “Police, dickhead,” at a guard dog while showing his badge. He later goes on to call the dog a dickhead and blames him for knowing too much about a murder. Looks like we have a great action hero on our hands.
In public, Stone is known for sporting a leather overcoat, dark-shaded sunglasses, pants, and boots. His cigar addiction is so severe, that he even stops to light one while running up the stairs to grab a suspect. Per his boss Chief Thrasher (Alun Armstrong, GET CARTER), “he lives on anxiety, coffee and chocolate” and no one truly knows how to make sense of that. Stone falls asleep holding a burning cigarette, and doesn’t even sleep in a bed – instead, he has placed a hammock in his living room to serve that purpose. He is so out of touch, that in one scene of the movie he is seen shaving while sitting at a bar, not even inside the restroom. That’s who we’re dealing with.
Of course, Stone makes it clear he has a fascination with Harley Davidson, where he collects all types of brand merchandise and advertising materials, including a giant shower logo. It makes you forget Stone’s first name for a moment, doesn’t it? Seems a bit childish, but who am I to judge?
In London, “day has changed into an interminable night” due to pollution, and global warming has brought “forty days and nights of heavy rainfall” which has submerged most of the city. This is why some of the police now operate out of hovercrafts, which means that hovercrafts are now the standard police vehicles, and most places are filled with the sound of splashing. Because of the flooding, there has been a serious invasion of rats, and whether that is really due to global warming I don’t know, but at least the movie does show some concern for the consequences beyond the weather. Well, I’m going to try and argue with a Republican the next time he acts like he believes global warming is just about hot temperatures, not extreme temperature fluctuations or other things that come with it. “You do not understand what SPLIT SECOND understood three decades ago!?”
(Pretty much one more correct fact: a TV spot broadcast from this co-production mentions the U.S. vetoing “yet another U.N. resolution concerning global warming.” Well, yes, that looks reasonable.)
“All we know,” says the narrator, “is that Stone has a weird complicated reason for being in Perth: obsessively searching for the man who killed his partner – definitely not not his partner – because there is a bond so deep he can hear her breathing and her heart beats.”
Which is why he steps inside a club where a woman in S&M accessories dances to what seems to be a Prince-inspired song*. His coffee order comes with a two drink minimum, so he jumps at the chance for two. While he is next to a pay phone by the restrooms, a woman tells him to “watch the door” which sounded odd, and before you know it, she has her heart ripped out of her ribcage and written in blood on the mirror states “I’m back.” Over her corpse, Stone lays his jacket out of respect. (He has an additional one or wears the same one the following day.)
He receives a goofy new partner from Thrasher who’s called Dick Durkin (Neil Duncan, currently the voice of Alfred in a variety of Batman cartoons). The entrance to HQ is down a corridor where you must deposit your guns and type a passcode into a cage, surrounded by metal walls. Somehow, this killer is able to deliver a refrigerated container with the woman’s heart and a giant chunk missing. “The only thing we know for certain is that he isn’t a vegetarian,” is what Stone would later state.
“Paulsen fills the role of ‘prick who hates Stone and is annoying, but enjoyable in how Stone tells him to fuck off’ and it is filled by Pete Postlethwaite,” said the one in charge.
I believe I first noticed Postlethwaite in the other sci-fi film he did this summer. A few years later he was everywhere: USUAL SUSPECTS, ROMEO + JULIET, THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK, AMISTAD, etc. (and I do mean everywhere).
When Paulsen gives Stone a hard time about his suspension, Stone takes the gold pen from Paulsen’s shirt pocket and uses it to stir his coffee. It’s a passive-aggressive gesture that ‘turns the coffee mug into a pen’ to go along with the fact that ‘Stone loves coffee.’ Amazing.
While visiting his dead partner Foster’s grave in a necropolis, Stone encounters Foster’s widow Michelle (she was in STAR TREK VI the year before and after running Delilah), who he was having an affair with that he is still in love with. She goes to his apartment but it’s not exactly enchanting. There are pigeons attacking her face and guns strewn all over the place. “Sweet, nice lady” is what she says when she says “It’s good to see you” and she cuddles him and dozes off. She looks like a normal human until we see her much later sitting in front of the refrigerator where she ate the chocolate stuck to it with filth like magnets.
While she’s in the shower, there’s a moment specifically created to imply the killer wants to attack her, but fortunately, instead of killing her, he simply starts the Harley that Stone keeps in his living room. Ultimately, Stone has an encounter with the killer as he is hiding out in a neighbor’s apartment, and we finally get some fighting, though it is lessened by the need to not show the killer too much. We get just enough of a look to make a guess that he’s a monster like an alien or something.
It’s one of those fun shootouts where people, and/or guns, are drilling huge gaping holes through walls. Durken gets shot and exits out the window like an overpowered cannon (he’s okay). Stone does a ton of somersaults and other crazy stuff to dodge getting hit.
What is interesting about this is that it uses a lot of the cliches of a city cop movie, but set in a dystopian future and has elements of PREDATOR. It is true that PREDATOR 2 is also a city cop movie, set in a dystopian future and has elements of PREDATOR, and that it is way more larger and more fun than this. But, it is a cool blend of genres, and this is another take on it so I am all here for it.
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