Murder, massacre, bloodlust (Review: "Two Minute Warning")

Note: This is a simple recollection and review of a person who appreciates the arts, including film. Humbly speaking, he is just starting again digging for movies this summer, and he's not much knowledgeable in motion picture. So don't expect that he'll give you a good review like those in newspapers. He just wants to write. Maybe in the future, he will write reviews better.

Recently this 9 a.m. of  April, 8, 2013, I viewed a film from the past which I found interesting to watch. On Cinemax, after seeing a good, original iteration of Captain America (where I saw again Nazis after The Rocketeer and The Counterfeit Traitor) in the morning, I was glued to a disaster film from 1976: Two-Minute Warning. It all started with a successful murder attempt to an unknown biker. Then, it would proceed to the beginning of a big day at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum—or the venue of the 1984 Summer Olympics—which attracted my eye from the movie's start. As the movie reels, different characters would be revealed, all fans watching the football championship to occur at the venue, all to be affected by a disaster that will happen soon.

The movie was good on editing and scene progression. The fast-moving events in the movie tricked my mind enough to speculate and guess. I would be taken to the football game, then to the murderer responsible for the crime earlier, now on a car with the radio on, then to the stadium again, then again to the murderer, then to an OB van for the game's TV broadcast...The cycle goes on like that, igniting my mind as to who that killer really is, and what's the motive, and so on and so forth.

But it also gave me a perspective of culture, and of sinful nature, now in a form of America's favorite sport, football, and of the weapon most people grasp, the gun. It even reminded me of the awful, disdainful killings at a daycare in the same country last year. It did let me see how people are glued to amusement that they don't even see that evil's behind them, until few bangs would panic them out. The good thing, however, is that the police works fast (how about us?), although it wasn't that nice that they mistreat innocents and become suspicious of them and overpower them.

In the end, it's just a movie. But it seemed that the cravings of bloodlust became rampant: from the killings on US, until the massacres in Mindanao, to the random violence seen on the news. If Upton Sinclair analogizes debauchery to the Cup of Fury, what could we pair to guns and rifles?

Sometimes I could really conclude that motion pictures sometimes reveal a glimpse of life, though most of the time it takes you out of reality. And I found myself agreeing to the late Roger Ebert's negative response:

 "I knew going in what the movie was about (few films have such blunt premises) and I knew Two-Minute Warning was supposed to be a thriller, not a social statement. But I thought perhaps the movie would at least include a little pop sociology to soften its blood-letting. Not a chance. It's a cheerfully unashamed exploitation of two of our great national preoccupations, pro football and guns."

Well said!