7/20/06: The Expert (1995)Want to feel good about the death penalty? Check out
this exit interview with (newly deceased) Death Row inmate Mauriceo Brown. The supportive reporters at Court TV avoid any hard questions as Brown plays the victim. Read the whole thing to catch every creepy contradiction. Best moment: “[Prosecutors] tried to make it seem like a robbery gone bad, but…[the victim] still had all his jewelry, keys to his car, and everything.”
Yeah, that would be the “gone bad” part. It’s killers like Mauriceo who let us enjoy films like
The Expert.
A veteran stuntman gets the director’s credit, but much of
The Expert was helmed by The Amazing
William Lustig—whose entire filmography will eventually be covered here. There’s also a fun script by veteran “Dick Tracy” scribe Max Allan Collins. No good conservative can resist the pitch: A SWAT instructor loves the death penalty so much that he breaks into a prison to be sure it’s carried out.
John Lomax—played by marital arts star Jeff Speakman—certainly has good motivation. A leering psycho killed his sister and was sentenced to death, and then let off the hook by a Leftist court system.
Breaking into prison is easy. Lomax’s real problem is the irritating presence of Alex Datcher—who’s against the death penalty until her life’s at risk—and Elizabeth Gracen—who’s against the death penalty because…well, because she’s the kind of actress who had sex with Bill Clinton.
The voice of reason is James Brolin, in his final decent performance before ending up on Streisand Row. His tough prison warden is the kind of guy who offers grilled meats to the sensitive media gathered to cover an execution. There’s a stab at both sides of the capital punishment debate, but it’s defused by the warden’s insight. “Over here,” says Warden Munsey of an inmate, “we have a guy who was born again—but the man he killed won’t be.”
The ambitious script—and Speakman’s limitations—offers plenty of clues as to why the original director left the production. The movie still offers all the action and insight of any Lustig project. It’s also fun to think of Martin Sheen having to watch the movie just because his son Ramon is in the thing.
Brown’s victim, incidentally, was a law student named Michael LaHood, Jr. You won’t find LaHood mentioned in the Court TV coverage. The getaway driver was also convicted of murder, but a judge overturned the sentence.
Here’s the driver’s sympathetic article.
Make it your own: The Expert is available in Europe as a low-priced DVD—most likely as some kind of savage curiosity. (The ad copy: "When you can't get justice...get even.") Americans have to settle for r
easonably cheap copies on VHS.
