{"id":7525,"date":"2024-10-27T14:04:43","date_gmt":"2024-10-27T18:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=7525"},"modified":"2024-10-27T14:04:43","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T18:04:43","slug":"renegades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/27\/renegades\/","title":{"rendered":"Renegades"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Renegades <\/strong>(1989)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 106 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jack Sholder\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Rich\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Michael Kamen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Phil Meheux\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 2, 1989 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Jami Gertz, Robert Knepper, Bill Smitrovich, Clark Johnson, Peter MacNeill, Floyd \u201cRed Crow\u201d Westerman, Joe Griffin, John Di Benedetto, Kyra Harper, Gary Farmer.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $9M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0In between gigs playing cowboy in Young Guns and its 1990 sequel, Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips played different types of mavericks in Renegades<\/strong>, an action-comedy about a cop teaming up with a Native American to retrieve a stolen lance from a vicious criminal. It follows the usual buddy movie formula of two mismatched partners initially distrustful of one another eventually setting aside their differences to work together in solving a crime. While it\u2019s no Lethal Weapon, it\u2019s an entertaining action flick in its own right.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The plot of Renegades<\/strong> is pretty silly. It has to do with a lance belonging to the Lakota tribe. It\u2019s been in their possession for generations. For our purposes, it\u2019s the movie\u2019s McGuffin. It gets stolen while it\u2019s on display in a Philadelphia art gallery. The culprit is Marino (Knepper, D.O.A.), a nasty little piece of work who just stole $6 million in diamonds from a dealer. While running from the problem, he and his guys end up in the gallery where he grabs the lance killing the Native American that tries to stop him in the process. The victim\u2019s brother Hank Snow (Phillips) goes after the gang to get it back.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What Hank doesn\u2019t know is that a member of Marino\u2019s gang is actually an undercover cop, Buster McHenry (Sutherland), trying to nab a dirty cop. In the fracas following the theft, Marino shoots Buster and leaves him for dead. Hank finds him and nurses him back to health. He needs him to help him get the lance back. They don\u2019t like each other at first. Hank blames him for his brother\u2019s murder. Buster prefers to work alone. Too bad for him ditching Hank isn\u2019t easy. While they try to track down Marino with the help of his girlfriend, beauty shop owner Barbara (Gertz, The Lost Boys), the police are trying to nail Buster for his participation in the jewel robbery. It seems he was purposely vague to his CO (Smitrovich, Life Goes On) about what he was working on.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As a lifelong Philadelphia area native, I noticed right away that Renegades<\/strong>, while set in the City of Brotherly Love, wasn\u2019t actually filmed there. Aside from some second unit scenes, it was shot mainly in Toronto. The biggest tip-off is the scene at the 2nd<\/sup> Street El Station. It\u2019s NEVER been that clean, EVER! Neither have the city streets for that matter. And where are all the homeless people? This movie isn\u2019t going for realism, that\u2019s for sure.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Shall we take a closer look at the main characters? Buster is a lone wolf cop that doesn\u2019t play by the rules. He carries with him guilt over the sins of his father, a dirty cop who went to prison. Hank is your typical stoic Native American trying to honor his heritage. He\u2019s something of a prodigal son having left home for a period of time to find out who he is. He came home because it\u2019s where he belongs according to his father, the tribe\u2019s medicine man (Westerman, The Doors). This is as much character exposition as you\u2019ll get in Renegades<\/strong>, but at least it\u2019s something. Gertz, the only significant female character, is little more than a dose of estrogen. She primarily exists to be dragged around by the two leads while they try to track down her boyfriend. Given her ultimate fate, I\u2019d say it\u2019s not much of a relationship. In any event, Buster and Hank aren\u2019t exactly an inspired pairing, but there\u2019s enough chemistry between the two leads to make it not suck. Their banter isn\u2019t all that clever or humorous. Buster constantly calling Hank \u201cchief\u201d is the height of humor. I can\u2019t say I\u2019m sold on Kiefer as a bad ass city cop. Phillips is more believable as a Native American even if his character does unbelievable things like jumping from one moving El train to another. Then again, who looks for verisimilitude in movies like Renegades<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

\u00a0While predictable and routine, Renegades<\/strong> benefits from the slick direction of Jack Sholder, the guy behind 1987\u2019s sci-fi-actioner The Hidden. He knows his way around an exciting car chase sequence. He gives us a doozy in the first 20 minutes with Marino forcing Buster at gunpoint to ditch their pursuers, most of the Philly police force. Hank joins the chase in a stolen car. It\u2019s a genuinely exciting sequence, the best in the movie. It\u2019s so good, the rest of the movie is something of a letdown. There\u2019s still plenty of action in it though.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Personally, I don\u2019t think Renegades<\/strong> is all that funny. It wants to be, but it doesn\u2019t come through. It\u2019s definitely uneven with the scale tipping more towards action. However, I still like it. It wasn\u2019t the huge box office hit the studio hoped it would be when they gave it an early summer release date. It\u2019s enjoyable, but not strong enough to take on the likes of Indiana Jones or Batman. It\u2019s good, but not that good.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Renegades (1989)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 106 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jack Sholder\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Rich\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Michael Kamen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Phil Meheux\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 2, 1989 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Jami Gertz, Robert Knepper, Bill Smitrovich, Clark Johnson, Peter MacNeill, Floyd \u201cRed Crow\u201d Westerman, Joe Griffin, John Di Benedetto, Kyra Harper, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Renegades-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7525"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7589,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7525\/revisions\/7589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}