The only Rutger Hauer movie to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize, Split Second serves as a wake up call to a sleepy and apparently really dirty Earth that we must change our ways! Rutger gives all the evidence the once over and shows us that global warming is no myth and the consequences are positively dire!
I know there’s been a lot of talk about climate change from whiny Third World countries and fat has-been liberal politicians who fly on private jets and own three mansions while telling me to use one square of toilet paper to do my business, but where the hell were they back in 1992 when Split Second and Rutger were all over the issue?
It seems like I can’t go five minutes without some filthy tree hugger busting out their disgusting “if it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, send it down” rhyme while I’m tying to cruise for chicks in my SUV. And when Al Gore isn’t smugly lecturing me on my rock and roll lifestyle, he’s out and about making some kind of propaganda movie about how sucky America is and how we should all go back to living in caves and walking around while trying not to exhale so much.
Split Second though is much more effective at making its point without all the politics that affects the ironically named An Inconvenient Truth. If anybody out there thinks we’re going to be reversing climate change, there’s a bunch of wooly mammoths out there that would disagree. If their asses weren’t frozen to death. That’s what so great about Split Second – it shows how we can live through the inevitable climate change. And with only a minimal amount of serial killer monsters on the loose.
It’s the far-flung future – 2008 to be exact! London has been inundated with water due to never ending rains! An explosion in the rat population has caused some sort of rat virus to spread all over! There’s also a monster on the loose ripping the hearts out of people! And only one cop can stop him. One cop who is on the EDGE!
But wait! He’s also a cop who’s lost his partner to this monster, stolen his partner’s wife, dumped her, got put on suspension, gets reinstated, hooks back up with this dead partner’s wife, and gets saddled with a new bookish partner who helps him get revenge! And since the apocalypse is upon us, there’s one more thing about this cop: leather pants!
Yeah, Split Second is that good! Rutger is the cop on the brink of a breakdown who lives on coffee, cigarettes, and chocolate. He also has some sort of psychic connection to the monster and is able to hear its heartbeat whenever it’s nearby like some kind of cop-in-leather-pants Spidey Sense. The cause of his connection turns out to be a bunch of claw marks the monster left on him after his initial encounter with him that left his partner dead.
Though that doesn’t make any sense, just chalk it up to one of the benefits of climate change. Think how much easier law enforcement will have it once the Earth turns into Waterworld and they have psychic links to all the scumbag criminals out there!
Rutger’s new partner is Dick Durkin and he’s able to remember all the exposition the script saddles him with to explain everything about the monster. (Well, everything except what it is and why it exists.)
This thing sort of looks like a more humanoid version of Alien and eats hearts. It also manages to carve intricate signs on the chest of Dick Durkin which lead Dick and Rutger back to its subway lair which is submerged in water.
There’s a lot of talk about Scorpio being a water sign, magic, souls, and finishing the circle, but I didn’t understand a lick of it. What I did understand though was when Rutger and Dick raided the police armory to get really huge guns to blast this thing with!
Rutger does an excellent job delivering the movie’s message, bursting in on his girlfriend when she’s taking a bath and a shower (Low flow, you hussy! Low flow!), by shooting all sorts of stuff, and by kneeing an obnoxious cop in the nuts. Now that’s a carbon footprint we can all support!
He also refers to his partner as “dipshit”, his captain is constantly cussing him out for being out of control, and old Dipshit Durkin manages to get in on the action by shooting up Rutger’s kitchen because he was trying to kill a rat! Dipshit and Rutger even get into a firefight in the morgue!
Just because a movie is going to educate you doesn’t mean it has to be an alarmist, inaccurate, liberally-slanted documentary! It can also be a bad ass cop movie, too! Eerily prophetic with its take on global warming, it will also put an okay size tent in your leather pants with its unrelentingly grim atmosphere and generous dose of frequently gooey violence. And every copy of the film you purchase counts as a carbon set aside against Al’s own lame movie!
© 2013 MonsterHunter
