No Surrender Cinema: Dead Bang (1989)
A group of racist scum would prefer that it be a “white Christmas” all year round, but when a cop ends up dead one of his fellow officers steps his game up to bring the bastards down. Join me for the final No Surrender Cinema of 2024 as Don Johnson makes the jump from Miami to LA and plays a very different kind of cop in Dead Bang!
While there are countless actors who end up becoming so synonymous with their most famous role that it leads to typecasting, Don Johnson is certainly not one of those actors. Fresh off his five year run as the iconic, pastel wearing, suave Sonny Crockett on Miami Vice, Johnson’s lead role in Dead Bang is a lot less Sonny Crockett and a lot more a man circling the drain. Jerry Beck is a cop who can’t even see his own kids and buries his troubles with the help of whatever bottle is within reach. To make matters worse, everyone he comes into contact with seems to point out just how shitty he appears to look. Gone is the style icon that was Sonny Crockett, and in his place is a disheveled, perpetually angry officer of the law who spends Christmas morning throwing up on a recently apprehended suspect. The Garbage Pail Kids would be so proud!
The reason why Beck is putting in holiday hours has less to do with overtime pay (although he could surely use it) and more about a cop who was killed by someone who had just robbed a convenience store and murdered the clerk in cold blood. The #1 suspect is a guy named Bobby Burns, but when a hungover Beck decides to take Burns’ parole officer hostage and drag him on a Christmas morning raid, that’s how we end up with the aforementioned vomit shower. Perhaps the biggest tell of all that we’re as far removed from Miami Vice’s impact on style and fashion aside from Johnson playing against type is the fact that the parole officer shows up to begrudgingly join Beck dressed in an Adidas tracksuit and Nike sneakers. That sort of brand mixing is a crime in and of itself!
Bobby Burns is in the wind, and it’s up to Beck to track him down, but the more Beck learns about Burns the more he finds himself pulled into a very dark corner of the world. It turns out that Bobby is not just a cop killer, but he’s part of a bigger problem; a network of remorseless white supremacists that spend their Christmas robbing and killing. The man that Beck is looking for is not a part of the main group of antagonists just yet, but these particular four will spend the rest of Dead Bang‘s run time trying to put Beck out of his misery with a variety of firepower. Luckily for Beck, he earns some support from the FBI in the form of straight-laced and uptight Agent Kressler (William Forsythe, straying from the crazed roles he’s best known for), but it’s clear from the moment that Kressler and Beck trade introductions that this is going to be an Odd Couple style pairing.
Beck’s next move is to travel to Oklahoma to follow up on a lead, and it’s apparent from the get-go that he’s not going to get the help he needs when the local police chief decorates his office with a sign that uses a particularly cruel racial epithet. The chief isn’t all that motivated to help Beck (and Beck firing back with some sarcastic quips doesn’t help his cause), but the timely arrival of Kressler gets the chief to perk up and do as he’s told, lest he wants to defy the FBI. Beck and Kressler will soon gain an ally in their investigation in the form of Chief Dixon (Tim Reid of WKRP In Cincinnati and Sister Sister fame, who just turned 80 years old last week…Father Time needs to take a break), who is sympathetic to the cause due to being a black man himself, but who is also an upstanding officer in a movie full of cops that range from unreliable like Beck to scum like the racist sheriff. This alliance springs into action for the film’s climax, where the good guys carry out a search warrant for an Aryan training ground where they believe Burns is being hidden, only to find that things aren’t so cut and dry.
Dead Bang is a movie that I remember being on HBO a lot in the 90’s, but I didn’t really remember much about it. In fact, I hadn’t thought much about it over the years until recently when it was mentioned during a conversation on X/Twitter as an action film set at Christmas time. I thought it would be good to have some timely content to wrap up my contributions to Bulletproof Action for the year 2024, but the fact that the events in Dead Bang happen over the holidays really only serves to remind Jerry Beck just how bad his life is. He’s been served with a restraining order by his ex-wife, she’s taking him for all he’s got, and now he’s got to pull himself away from his bottle of choice to solve the murder of a cop. Dead Bang is a tense thriller for sure, but it’s not one that’s dripping in the holiday spirit.
Although we get lots of gunplay and an exploding car, Dead Bang is more dialogue heavy than anything; there were times where I felt like I was watching a Roman Reigns match (if you’re a wrestling fan, you know exactly what I’m talking about). Director John Frankenheimer made his name crafting suspenseful thrillers such as the Cannon’s 52 Pick Up and the more suitable for the holiday season Reindeer Games, but with Dead Bang he was also making something biographical, as the film is reportedly based on the career of the “real” Jerry Beck, who was a Los Angeles homicide detective. I suppose Frankenheimer may have found is disingenuous to pad the runtime with a high body count and a bunch of explosions and opted for the slow burn approach. Once we do get to the film’s climax (a confrontation with the main group of racists in an underground bunker) it pays off, but there are a few moments in the film that are saved solely by Johnson’s effort and some of the subtle humor sprinkled in.
Does Dead Bang belong on a list of action films to enjoy while you’re drinking eggnog and opening presents? I’d have to say nay to that, however I do urge anyone who grew up enjoying Don Johnson on Miami Vice check this one out just to see how far he went in the other direction character-wise. The slow burn storytelling isn’t terrible, but some might feel like it’s a chore (not to mention the final twist is pretty obvious to anyone paying attention early on). Chalk this one up to a curiosity watch if you want a post-Vice, pre-Nash Bridges Don Johnson fix.
Dead Bang is available on DVD and an imported Blu-ray, and is currently uploaded to Dailymotion.
