[5]
Michael Biehn (The Terminator) stars as a district attorney who is forced to reconsider his stance against the death penalty when a young, blood-drinking serial killer (Alex McArthur) is brought to justice. Rampage is directed and co-written by William Friedkin (Sorcerer, To Live and Die in L.A.), who made a number of films that failed to impress audiences or critics upon their initial release. While some of these films have been rediscovered and more favorably received in recent years, I’m not sure if Rampage will enjoy the same reassessment.
When this film was made in 1987, serial killer films hadn’t quite become the bona-fide subgenre they are today, but they soon fell into a formula that has worked for decades: tragedy begets investigation, which begets chase, which culminates in catching the killer. Friedkin’s approach contains all these elements, but gives equal weight to the crime and the punishment, with the murders and the police investigation taking up half the run-time, and the court room trial and moral quandary occupying most of the other half. The result is a film more lop-sided than most other serial killer flicks.
The visceral elements — including McArthur being captured in a church after covering himself in a priest’s blood — leave more of an impact than the philosophical ones. Michael Biehn’s performance is similarly sidelined by the killer and his crimes. I wanted to understand what motivated this killer, but it’s left frustratingly unresolved. And while an answer might satisfy my morbid curiosity, it still might not sustain Rampage‘s legal preparation and courtroom scenes. When the crimes are this heinous and the killer this unrepentant, it’s hard to think of capital punishment as an option so much as a mandate. Friedkin often rails against narrative expectation, but in this instance, a more genre-filmmaking approach — a simple cat and mouse chase — would probably be more satisfying.
With Nicholas Campbell, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Grace Zabriskie, and music by Ennio Morricone.