Diagonaldi Very well executed

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

bkoganbing I guess Don Johnson after Miami Vice wad destined to be cast as irreverent police detectives who get results which is why they are tolerated. After easy living Sonny Crockett on a houseboat in Miami Vice he does Dead Bang in which his character is working off a perpetual hangover. Soon enough he would be in Nash Bridges where he once again had a sunny disposition.On Christmas Eve Johnson catches a homicide of a patrol officer shot at point blank range. Like millions of the rest of us Johnson had plans to spend time with his family. But he figures if he's working Christmas investigating the shooting of a fellow officer no one else should be enjoying themselves. And he makes sure they don't.A convenience store manager who was shot and survived gave out a description of someone who the deceased spotted before he was killed. Following this suspect out of southern California in a tour around red state America leads Johnson on a merry chase through a variety of white supremacist groups. The object of his search is Frank Military identified by the convenience store manager who as it were is black.Johnson really steps on a lot of toes, two prime examples are Bob Balaban a parole officer whom he kidnaps Christmas Day so that he can pursue without a warrant a lead. That whole sequence including what Johnson does while interrogating his lead is hilarious.He also handles department shrink in a most unusual manner. Michael Jeter plays the psychiatrist who never encountered issues like Johnson has. I also can't forget the uptight, anal retentive FBI guy that Johnson is forced to work with, William Forsythe. Those two are one impossible team.Though it has a lot a lot humor Dead Bang also is a most serious look at a proliferation of white supremacist groups which makes the film maybe even more relevant for today.

neldodm I write this commentary because I'm surprised of the low rate that people gave to this movie. I repeat: I give this film a 9! Allow me to say that is a John Frankenheimer's film. I mean, all his movies are great! This one is funny, but a serious film, with an excellent plot, good dialogs, all the actors -his performances- are very credible, an intrigue that keeps you interested about what is going to happen next, suspense, action scenes very well filmed, even at least two moments of fine humor. All these elements provides a 9/10 points and elevate this film to another category. It's not a B realization. Even more, the story about a sect of fanatic racist people which exists in real life (not this one in particular, but there are hundreds of them in the United States), so it gives to the film a particular point of view about this sad reality. It almost can be watched as a documentary. Very good film, it's been edited in DVD. Don't loose the opportunity to watch it! And also with all the others movies of John Frankenheimer, take a look of his list as director. All excellent

Rick Blaine Didn't much like this one. Not the first time and not now either.What really grates is the music. It's the kind you hear on movies made with cheap celluloid. It's loud and garish and gives you a headache in no time flat and it's got 'diddley' to do with the movie - doesn't fit the emotional impact at all.Speaking of bad celluloid. This is made so cheap you now know what it must have felt like to be Ludwig van Beethoven and have to write that final symphony. Grainy and generally poor quality.This one is trying to be 'cult' but it fails miserably. About the only pretty thing in this one is Penelope Ann - and she's gone almost before she pops up.Don Johnson is cool. Miami Vice might be dated but it's cool. Violent too. I digress. It's cool. This is so totally different. It's not cool. It tries to be something it's not. No matter that some people love it - I find it totally luckless.A dud thud.

sol1218 (There are Spoilers) Christmas Eve sets off a number of incidents in L.A that goes through the states of Arizona and Oklahoma and finally leads to the mountains outside of Boulder Colorado, at the Shelby Ranch. It's there where we have a confrontation between the local police the FBI and L.A homicide policeman Jerry Beck, Don Johnson, on a Neo-Nazi concentration camp-like, minus inmates, headquarters. Guning down a black convenience store manager, who survived, and an L.A cop Gary Kimbel, who didn't, has LAPD officer track down the killer by checking all the parolees in and around L.A. Looking for a Bobby Burns who fit the description of the killer LA detective Jerry Beck checks out this biker place only to find Bobby Burns younger brother John who's not very helpful in the murder investigation. With Jerry trying to get John to talk about his brothers whereabouts out of nowhere this guy jumps out of the window, Jerry runs him down it what seemed like the length of the Boston Marathon. Jerry after running down tackling and cuffing the fugitive seems to uncontrollably, like it wasn't in the script but a sudden bodily function on his part, vomits not once but twice all over the poor mans shirt. It also turned out to Jerry's embarrassment that the person Jimmy Ellis wasn't the guy, Bobby Burns, that he was after. Jerry's on pins and needles with his marriage on the rocks and his estranged wife Karen not letting him see his two kids as well as him being told to have a psychiatric examination by an LAPD assigned shrink to see if he's fit for duty. Christmas night Jerry attends a policeman single's party and meets and spends the night at his pad with Linda who he later finds out to his surprise and shock was the wife, estranged but still married to, of Officer Gary Kimble who was shot just the day before! how much can one man take without going off his rocker! It seemed that the person involved with the shootings in LA went west to Cottonwood Arizona and, together with his friends,shot up a bar robbing and killing everyone in it. That incident has Jerry put back on the case and sent to Arizona to help, the Cottonwood police, in finding the killers. With the help of the local Cottonwood sheriff Jerry tracks down the killers to this farm and after a violent shootout the trio get away. Checking the farm house Jerry finds that the three fugitives left behind a map and letters about a big Neo-Nazi meeting to be held at a place called the Shelby Ranch in Colorado where the three are headed for. As you would expect nobody takes Jerry seriously since he's such a flake even though he has the evidence, the map and the letters, right in his hands. Even the local FBI man Arthur Kressler assigned to the murder case,since the murders crossed state lines,treats Jerry like he was a conspiracy nut, in him saying that the Neo-Nazis were planing to overthrow the US government,gone out of control. It takes a kidnapping, by Bobby Burns, and almost murder of Jerry Beck to finally convinces the FBI that Jerry may be on to something. Together with Boulder Sheriff Dixon's men Jerry and FBI agent Kressler storm the Shelby Ranch. Jerry & Co. not only find out the truth about what the persons there lead by the "Right Reverend" Ghbhardt, the Neo-Nazi religious Fuhuer, were planing for the future of America! Even more important it's found out who was behind the LA and Cottonwood Arizona murders, in which Officer Kimble was a victim, and what were the real and sick reasons behind them. Interesting but a bit complicated police thriller that mixes Neo-Nazis street thugs and a lot of emotional and mental instability, on both sides of the law, together in making a fairly good story. It was interesting to see a young William Forsythe as the FBI man Arthur Kressler being so goody two shoes, like a combination boy scout and altar boy, who became so upset with LAPD's Jerry Beck for as much as using off-color language to the point of almost coming to blows with him! In almost all of his movies after "Dead Bang" Forsythe, in films like "Stone Cold" and "Out for Justice", was anything but the stuck-up and self-righteous FBI agent Kressler that he played in the movie.