The Chase

(David Janssen Does it Better)

Based on a true story, The Chase is about the hunt for an escaped convict who is living in the Denver area.  Barry Corbin (also seen in Northern Exposure) plays the police officer, Wallis, in charge of the case.  He is about to become a grandpa, courtesy of his son who is also a police officer.  The convict, named Phil Hutchinson, is clever and violent.  But his plan to go to Brazil requires more money than he is making as an auto mechanic.  So he returns to robbing banks and ATMs.  Picking up on clues left behind, Wallis is on the hunt, and The Chase plods on to its inevitable conclusion.

The Chase is not exciting.  It behaves more like an episode of Investigative Reports or City Confidential, in which we meet all of the people who are touched by the suspect.  None of their stories are well developed, and we really never know why they should matter to us.  Not until the convict begins his last escapade, leading up to his apprehension, do we find out how these folks fit in.  For the most part, these folks are simply there.  They add nothing to the movie.  Had their stories never been told, we never would have noticed.

A better move would have been to focus on Wallis and Hutchinson.  Wallis is a good man and probably a good cop, but we don’t see enough of his investigative skills or how he managed the case.  Hutchinson is brutal, yet he keeps a picture of his mom and we don’t learn anything about why he does and why he is suspicious of women.  An emphasis on the hunter and his quarry, rather than all of the folks on the side, might have made this a better movie.

When the movie arrives at its climax, the chase of Hutchinson by the helicopter pilot and the kidnapping of the old man in the pickup truck (Ben Johnson), we are nearly at the end and the action sequence is short.  There is little tension in any of the scenes, and the flying is relatively mundane.  The moment Mike Silva (Robert Beltran) puts the skid on the truck’s hood is the most exciting.  It could have been different.

One movie that did it all much better was Birds of Prey, released as a Made for TV movie in 1973.  In it, David Janssen plays Harry Walker, a Salt Lake City traffic helicopter pilot for a radio station.  Walker learns of an armed robbery and chases the perpetrators and their hostage, who start out in a car, but transfer to a helicopter of their own.  The movie is focused on Walker and his quarry, and the flying is spectacular.  Walker engages in some interesting aerial stunts, stops a fuel truck on the highway in order to refuel, and finally rams the suspects’ aircraft when it becomes apparent that they are going to get away after the hostage is freed.  The characters are limited, better drawn, and the emphasis remains constant.

The Chase never really lives up to its name and is cluttered with people who don’t make a difference to the story.  Those that do make a difference are not drawn as well as they could be, and the story (and the characters) suffers as we try to determine who should really matter to us.  Useful as background noise while doing the ironing, but not as a picture to spend time thinking about.

A Comment About Robert Beltran’s Performance:

Robert plays the helicopter pilot Mike Silva.  He is a focused individual who loves flying and wants to share what he sees with a wider audience.  He cares about his job and he wants to do it better than anyone else, but he also wants to see it grow.  When he describes his dream of being the first flying weatherman, and showing folks summer squalls from the air, you can hear the passion.  During the actual chase scenes with the helicopter I kept waiting for Mike Silva to get as engaged with the action as Harry Walker did.  It never happens because it simply can’t.  Robert does the best he can to convince the viewer that Mike is someone we should notice, but the movie does not provide any opportunities to really capitalize on that effort.  His moments on screen are limited, so he uses his voice and the intensity he puts into the dialogue to draw this character.  I wonder what we would have seen had this been a Birds of Prey remake.  The passion in Robert’s voice would probably spill over into the rest of the character and I suspect we would have been cheering him on.  Instead, Robert simply does what he can in a movie that offers him very little to work with.