Archive: Bruce Willis in Striking Distance

Although he's stated in recent interviews that he's longing to get away from the kind of films that featured him with a gun in his hand, Striking Distance is evidence that Die Hard star Bruce Willis is better off in high concept actioners than in dramatic vehicles such as Death Becomes Her and Colour of Night. Reports of a difficult shoot and of problems in the editing room are nowhere evident in the finished product. Striking Distance is a serviceable thriller that will satisfy Bruce fans until Die Hard 3 comes along.

In this film, which was shot wider the title Three Rivers, Willis plays Thomas Hardy. No, not the guy that wrote all those books about Yorkshire. In Striking Distance, he's a third generation Pittsburgh cop who finds himself at odds with his own department when he alleges that a serial killer may well be a police officer. To make matters worse, he's testified against his former partner in an excessive force case.

Matters come to ahead when Willis' father is murdered, after a frantic car chase, by the murderer, the wrong man is arrested for the crime and Hardy's one-tone partner commits suicide rather than go to jail. Tom hits the bottle and the skids, ending up as a 'river rat', a member of the marine police force that patrols Pittsburgh's three rivers area. Actually, as penances go, this seems to be quite a cushy number, sailing up and down the river all day wearing shorts, busting drunken fellow boaters and accompanied by a pretty partner (Sarah Jessica Parker). Naturally, things don't stay quiet for long. When the same serial killer returns to menace virtually any woman that Hardy has ever known, Hardy has to get back on the rails and back in action, taking on both the madman and the establishment in a race against time.

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