The film 'Narrow
Margin' was originally made in the 1950's and was an exciting tale about a man protecting
a witness to a Mafia killing on board a train as a variety of killers try to kill them.
The film was re-made in 1990 and starred Gene Hackman as the 'protector on the train'. The
film had a few twists different from the original including having a woman (Anne Archer)
as one of the killers. Here she is in the film's finale revealing her murderous intentions
on the roof of the train.
'The Art of War' was a Wesley Snipes vehicle. Snipes plays an operative for a shady USA government organisation (aren't they all?) who stumbles into a plot to kill a Chinese leader. Totally far fetched but watchable he has a Chinese interpreter in tow (Marie Matiko) as well as having to deal with a Chinese hitwoman trying to kill them with a silenced gun in a hospital. There's little other action apart from this one scene for lovers of Gun Moll entertainment and the villainess (Anne Archer again) is woefully underused as is Liliana Komorwoska who featured in the previous 'Silence is Golden' article.
The film may not be that good but 'Last Rites' is worth seeing solely for the presence of Zena (Anne Twomey) who is the daughter of a Mafia don. Tom Berenger plays her brother but since he doesn't want to follow in the family tradition (he's a priest) it is left to the redoubtable Zena to be the driving force in silencing the enemies of her father and his organisation.
Hart to Hart'
is an old favourite on the Gun Moll site. One of the episodes had the following villainess
who started off killing her husband with a silenced pistol. It wasn't very long before
Jennifer and Johnathan Hart were on the case together with their faithful dog (and I am
talking about Freeway here not Max) but the lady never reached the heights to her
murderous opening scene.
"Is this a dagger I see before me?". Nope, its a dirty great silenced pistol and it is Donna Mills who looks a bit bemused by it. I can't remember the name of this TV move, much the same as the character played by Donna Mills who was suffering from amnesia for most of the film. Needless to say she has witnessed a murder and the bad guys are out to stop her talking. They should have kept the murder weapon out of her reach as she is now going to use it to get to the truth.
'Diagnosis Murder' is a TV series starring Dick Van Dyke as a crime solving hospital doctor. This is one of those highly improbable but enjoyable, in a non-demanding sort of way, detective shows set in the same mould as 'Murder She Wrote' etc. Given the show's longetivity (though it has now been cancelled) you are always bound to get a fair quotient of female adversaries none more so than the following silencer wielding nurse who thinks she is going to kill off one of her patients but hasn't catered for the wiles of the learned doctor.
