ある日曜日、アメリカンフットボールのプロ・チーム、ロサンゼルス・ラムズ対ボルチモア・コルツの試合のため満員のロサンゼルス・メモリアル・コロシアムに、ライフルを持った謎の狙撃手が潜入した。それを知ったロサンゼルス市警察とSWATが阻止に動くが、試合終了の間際に犯人は観客席に向かって銃を乱射する。
製作費: $6,700,000 (10億円)
興行収入: $6,700,000 (10億円)
推定収支: $0 (0億円)
※製作費・興行収入はTMDBのデータを参照しています。収支は(興行収入 - 製作費)で算出したFindKey独自の推定値であり、広告宣伝費や諸経費は含まれません (1ドル=150円換算)。
監督: Larry Peerce
脚本: Edward Hume / George La Fountaine Sr.
音楽: Charles Fox
撮影監督: Gerald Hirschfeld
制作会社: Universal Pictures / Filmways Pictures
Undervalued thriller. A lone gunman has his sights set on a sell-out crowd at a championship football game. Captain Peter Holly leads the desperate fight to try and stop the maniac from picking people off at will. Perched high on top of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the gunman has his pick of the targets, the Mayor -the President - or merely the innocent? Either way he has to be stopped before all hell breaks loose. Much like "Rollercoaster" a year later, Two-Minute Warning is wrongly lumped in with the disaster movie genre that flooded the 1970s, and just like Rollercoaster, Two-Minute Warning is an excellently taut thriller. The build up is paced to precision, all characters are introduced to us to give us something to associate with should things go very wrong. As this is happening we get little POV snippets of our killer, accompanied by Charles Fox's harshly impacting music, the killer is never seen but we feel the dread, the impending sense of murder is a constant presence. Once we are at the game and the authorities are aware that a sniper is on the roof, the film shifts up a gear and lays on the suspense thick and heavy. Captain Holly (Charlton Heston in authoritative scene commanding form) is joined by the SWAT team, led by the cool and serious Sgt. Chris Button (John Cassavetes), whilst stadium security manager Sam McKeever (Martin Balsam) prays that disaster can be averted. Then the final third of the picture is a ripper of heart pounding stuff, a final third that rewards the viewers patience for having invested in the film and the key characters. Filling out the cast is Gena Rowlands, Jack Klugman (brilliant interplay with Mitch Ryan's priest), Beau Bridges, Walter Pidgeon and David Jansen. Two-Minute Warning is a quality thriller that is sadly undervalued on the big IMDb site, go on, give it a go and you might just be pleasantly surprised. 7.5/10 Footnote: I should point out that my thoughts are on the original unedited cut of this film, I have never seen the watered down TV cut and have no plans to ever do so.
