Extreme Prejudice (1987; Walter Hill) is much more
than an exciting, uber-macho, testosterone-drenched, breathlessly-paced, grimy
and sleazy slam-bam action flick directed by one of the grandmasters of the
genre with a cast of the roughest, toughest B-listers around—
it’s a thriller that goes far beyond simplistic the white
hat/black hat rhetoric prevalent in the 1980s, and has bubbling under the
surface a serious contempt for “cowboy politics” that show no respect to the
laws of sovereign foreign nations—or our own.
Considered a western by its producers, the flick
touches upon more “contemporary” themes like paranoia about a shadow government,
and conspiracy theories about secret wars being fought at home in the name of “National
Security.”