The Spreading Ground

Trailer—The Spreading Ground

source: The Spreading Ground

You can't help but like movies about serial killers of little girls. They're so evil. There is no ambiguity whatever, no room for self doubt, no reason for reflection. They're the Osama bin Ladens of the criminal world. Even imprisoned murderers feel superior to child molesters and killers. Well, after all, THEY have to have somebody to look down on too. This Canadian production gives us Dennis Hopper and Frederick Forest as two detectives who are left only 48 hours to find the serial murderer. If they don't get the job done, the mayor's major investment in some property will be ruined and she'll be out of office. The mayor, however, is involved with some highly juiced Irish crooks, including Tom McCamus, and she puts the crooks on the tail of the serial murderer too because the killings are upsetting her apple cart. Tom McCamus has a great face for the movies. (He was an incestuous Dad in "The Sweet Hereafter".) And you can't beat him name, "Son of Camus." Unfortunately his acting here is about at the level of everyone else's -- strictly utilitarian. Dennis Hopper tries to play it straight, really he does. But underneath the professional cop and the flawed father we still sense the demon. I've always liked Frederick Forest. I don't think he's ever made it possible for a viewer to forget he's acting, but he looks great with his puffy eyes and louche ponytail. He looked even better as Dashiel Hammett. Not to put any of these performers down. Their acting doesn't stand out as poor because no one's stands out as particularly good. Leslie Hope seems to bring a kind of blur to whatever part of the screen she occupies. (Leslie Hope? Isn't that Bob Hope's real name? Maybe not.) The script is generic and not especially bad. The direction is efficient. The photography is really quite good. The colors are cool but appropriately so. And the lighting is as it should be -- solid black shadows where they are called for, and naturalistic lighting elsewhere. They didn't catch The X-File syndrome and throw us a lot of flashlight beams poking about in perpetual gloom. There's what I guess could be called an average chase through some newly constructed sewer at the climax. In first explaining how the sewer works to the investigators, the manager goes through his practiced tour -- the street runoff comes in here and is congealed with the solid waste, then it's processed in that unit over there, then the solid waste is emulsified and extracted by the Nakatomi Solid Waste Extractor, the individual E. coli are vasectomized, the cholera vibrios receive twelve-step counseling, the chloroform and bacteriocidal material are added over there, diluted with Toxico Smegmaphage, fractionally distilled, tested on experimental groups drawn from third-world prisons, and then its flushed out into the reservoir. "And that's what we drink?" asks a greenish Frederick Forest. It reminds me a little of Fritz Lang's "M" without any of the pathos.

This movie kinda let me down. It seemed a lot like the movie Jaws when the Hopper was telling the Mayor to close parks was like when Roy Shider was telling the Mayor to close the beaches. They both said no way its summer! But the box says Hopper has to get into the mind of a killer and think like one. But he really doesn't do anything too interesting or exciting. I'm not even a little convinced he and his partner have any experience doing police work when they are in the office wondering how they are gonna solve this case. They just say lets do police work and we'll solve it. And whats up with all the old men with pool cues. I didn't even begin to believe that they were mob bosses. And then the guy who was doubting the guy the mob picked to handle finding the killer. With his hundred dollar haircut and that he thinks his Di@k is the size of a schoolbus. Come on what cruddy lines. I thought he was gonna hit him with a baseball bat like in the other movies. I got this movie used and wouldn't buy it new. I suggest you skip this movie. Oh and it was funny seeing the microphone above the scene where hopper is going out to get coffee.

Dennis Hopper is without a doubt one of the finest underrated American actors of our time, and it was interesting to see how he would play out his role as a cop on the case of a child serial killer. Most movies Hopper has always played to psychotic menace threatening to blow up stuff or go on a killing spree, but in this movie, Hopper tried his best to keep that intensity and emotion while carrying a shield. Once I got into the plot of the movie, I was hooked, but it's just the little things that ultimately murdered the film. The concept of the film is great - not only are the cops on the move of catching the killer, but we get a chance to see how the gangsters operate in catching the killer. The subplot of the football stadium is kinda ridiculous, but necessary to involve the gangsters in the killer hunt. That's about all that is good you can say about the film. Although Hopper did try to act like a tough, experienced street smart cop, I can't help but feel his acting was below par, and there wasn't enough conviction that he was truly attached to the case. The directing was also terrible - it didn't have the feel of a true film, but rather a TV-movie production. This is most evident when the gangsters meet for the first time to form an elite team to hunt the killer down. When the leading gangster shoots the other mouthy gangster in slow motion, the acting was weak, predictable and terribly unexciting. That's when I knew that 1st of all, the action is going to be atrocious. The angling of the camera was amateurish, and the recalling scenes or haunting images of the killer's little sister had no true distinctive effect. If it was supposed to be scary, it wasn't. Everyone's acting was terrible, and even for Hopper, I didn't feel for his character, and I just didn't really care too much about his relationship with his daughter. The final thing that bothered me the most is the swat team. Once I saw the swat team in action, I was thinking, finally, something good. But I was wrong. 1st of all, the entire swat team consisted of 4 guys. That is just impossible. 2nd of all, apparently the swat team has no training whatsoever because many times in the film they carry their HKA4 submachine guns with one hand. Had the killer been hiding near the staircase with a shotgun, these 4 idiots would've been blown to bits because they weren't even aiming at anything or paying close attention. They should have had both hands on the gun aiming forward, but it just looks like they're not taking the job seriously and are just flaunting around. 3rd, SWAT team members do not yell out commands such as "Keep your eyes open, watch out for yourselves, are we good to go...etc." In reality, they use hand signals or have radios. But they're literally yelling at each other - how are you supposed to catch the killer when he can hear you're coming??? And to top it all off, these guys have no plan - apparently they're just running up and down going on a wild turkey chase. Eventually they end up doing nothing. That was the last straw. I'm no expert on special forces, but basically what I've just outlined, is pretty common sense. When the audience knows the movie is terrible, the action pretty much becomes the life-saver of the movie - when you can't even make an effort to make the action great, the movie is lost. I give 2 stars for the concept, but the rest cannot be credited. If you want to watch a crime thriller, don't bother with this one. There's plenty of crime in the movie - but it has the lack of thrill.

***Possible Plot Spoilers*** I adore Dennis Hopper. I question why he accepted the role of a police detective in 2000's The Spreading Ground. This movie flat out sucks and I'm about to tell you why. This is about a small town which is about to get a contract for a sports arena. One hitch: there's a killer on the loose and that is bad for business. The Mayor makes a deal with the Irish Mob to find the killer and make sure he never makes it to court. Det. Ed Delongpre has other plans. He wants this guy caught too, but he's on the level and believes in the system. He wants to see the system do it's job. That could have been pretty good. It could have been riveting. It was horrible. First, they label this guy a Serial Killer. Err no. There are specific criteria and none of it fits here. The bad guy has killed 5 kids the first day, and I think it was 2 the second day. This entire movie spans like a 48 hour time period.... Hardly Serial Killer action. I don't care what warped motives they give him in the end, Serial Killers do their deed over a long time span. They do not just all of a sudden kill 7 kids in two days. That's a Spree. Ok that irritant aside, the acting was atrocious. The only name here was Hopper, and he's the only one who came even close to pulling off his part. Unfortunately, he's kinda type-cast to me and I think he does psycho parts much, much better. This just wasn't a good vehicle for Hopper. It didn't allow him to do what he does best, which is to act all creepy. It's not that he did bad, it's that I've seen him do so much better. The Irish Mob guy, Johnny Gault (Tom McCamus - Long Day's Journey Into Night), who is in charge of their investigation is just over the top stiff. Contradiction? Not really. He is trying to play the cold, hard kinda guy and he does that to the point that the character is just wooden. Boring to the max. He didn't scare me. He didn't inspire any emotion at all except boredom. I cannot tell you how many times I checked to see how much longer it was til the end of this movie. The other thing about this is that it had the feel of a made-for-TV movie. You know what I mean. The poor production values, low budget, re-use of scenes to save costs. Just eh. Yanno? But, I feel like comparing this to those is an insult to those. Derek Vanlint was both the Director and Cinematographer on this project. He bit off more than he could chew. I can't help feeling that Hopper must have took this role as a personal favor to a friend. That's the only rational I can come up with. This was Vanlint's first job as Director, third as cinematographer. Hopefully this was a learning experience for him. I won't ruin the ending in case you do decide to torture yourself with this one, but I do want to say that they all dropped the ball here...even Hopper. In a scene that should have been emotionally gut-wrenching for the detective, it was just..well.. blah. I didn't see any of the angst at all that would accompany the total gear-change this guy made. Very disappointing. This 100 grueling minutes long and Rated R for violence and language. No kid under 13 is going to have any interest whatsoever in watching this, so no worries there. It's not suitable for anyone anyway. heh. Skip this one. You'll thank me later.

Except for the F-bomb, this has all the awe and splendor of a made for TV film. Det. Ed DeLongpre (Dennis Hopper) is tasked with finding a serial child killer without any clues. Meanwhile the mayor (Elizabeth Shepherd) has brokered a deal with the local Irish mafia to find the killer (with no trial) and is using Ed's partner as a go between. Ed also has a poorly written estranged relationship with his daughter Leslie (Leslie Hope) that takes away from the story by piling on substandard writing in cliche scenes. The opening has some good contrast scenes of the mayor performing a ground breaking ceremony and the bodies of little girls floating in the basin. As the audience we get glimpses of the killer, a man we instantly despise. The film is about Dennis Hopper piecing together clues and attempting to find the killer before the mafia does and decide they want to play god. It is an interesting crime/drama although the "touching" Hopper/ Hope scenes left something to be desired. Parental guide: F-bomb, no sex, no nudity.

This Canadian production gives us Dennis Hopper and Frederick Forest as two detectives who are left only 48 hours to find the serial murderer. If they don't get the job done, the mayor's major investment in some property will be ruined and she'll be out of office. The mayor, however, is involved with some highly juiced Irish crooks, including Tom McCamus, and she puts the crooks on the tail of the serial murderer too because the killings are upsetting her apple cart. Tom McCamus has a great face for the movies. (He was an incestuous Dad in "The Sweet Hereafter".) And you can't beat him name, "Son of Camus." Unfortunately his acting here is about at the level of everyone else's -- strictly utilitarian. Dennis Hopper tries to play it straight, really he does. But underneath the professional cop and the flawed father we still sense the demon. I've always liked Frederick Forest. I don't think he's ever made it possible for a viewer to forget he's acting, but he looks great with his puffy eyes and louche ponytail. He looked even better as Dashiel Hammett. Not to put any of these performers down. Their acting doesn't stand out as poor because no one's stands out as particularly good. Leslie Hope seems to bring a kind of blur to whatever part of the screen she occupies. (Leslie Hope? Isn't that Bob Hope's real name? Maybe not.) The script is generic and not especially bad. The direction is efficient. The photography is really quite good. The colors are cool but appropriately so. And the lighting is as it should be -- solid black shadows where they are called for, and naturalistic lighting elsewhere. They didn't catch The X-File syndrome and throw us a lot of flashlight beams poking about in perpetual gloom. There's what I guess could be called an average chase through some newly constructed sewer at the climax. In first explaining how the sewer works to the investigators, the manager goes through his practiced tour -- the street runoff comes in here and is congealed with the solid waste, then it's processed in that unit over there, then the solid waste is emulsified and extracted by the Nakatomi Solid Waste Extractor, the individual E. coli are vasectomized, the cholera vibrios receive twelve-step counseling, the chloroform and bacteriocidal material are added over there, diluted with Toxico Smegmaphage, fractionally distilled, tested on experimental groups drawn from third-world prisons, and then its flushed out into the reservoir.

***SPOILERS*** "Spreading Ground" starts off with a rash of murders of five year old girls in the oceanside town of Burman City. As the killings are connected to a single serial killer the city's chief executive Mayor Hackett, Elizabeth Shepherd, want's the unknown killer to be both captured and killed if possible within 48 hours in order to keep her pet project, by successfully floating a bond in the upcoming municipal elections, for a new sports stadium alive. Mayor Hackett's unreasonable order put her top cop Capt.Nieman's, Chuck Shamata, head on the chopping block in giving him, and those under him, the sole responsibility to catch or kill the rampaging child murderer within a time period of two days. It turns out that not only are the police interested in catching the killer but the local Irish Mafia as well. Getting their ace hit-man Johnny Gault, Tom McCamus, on the case he gets the low down on who the killer is by a pick pocket team snatching his key-chain during one of his kidnap murders. There's also Det. Ed Delongpre, Dennis Hopper, who's the cop put on the child murder case who has a slew of problems of his own. One of them is his estranged daughter Leslie, Leslie Hope,whom he hasn't seen for ten years who also just happens to be Mayor Hackett's personal assistant and publicist. All this makes Det. Delongpre as well as his partner Det. Micael McGivern, Fredrick Forrest, job in finding the killer more difficult then it already is. Were given a clue to the killer's mental state at the very beginning of the movie in a flashback when he was a young boy. It turns out that he's obsessed with water in that it cleanses both the body and soul of persons who are submerged in it like one being baptized. The killer goes a step farther then baptizing his victims by both bashing their skulls in and dumping their unconscious bodies into the local water purifying plant, where he works at, and drowning them. ***SPOILERS*** With both Detectives Delongpre and Forrest and Irish Mafia hit-man Gault working independently they track down the elusive killer in the tunnel of the water treatment plant as he tries to make his getaway. We given a long speech by the killer in how he in fact saved his victims from a life of sin and depravity by mercifully murdering them. Det. Delongpre who was about to put the cuffs on the homicidal maniac just couldn't hold it in any more and did what he in fact prevented Gault from doing: Put a bullet in his hide and leave him for dead for the meat wagon, or police pathologist van, to carter him away. The movie just tried to be too surreal and avant guard, like European films of the 1950's, in it's message to really be effective as an average or very good straight crime film. There's was also a hint of police corruption and being blackmailed for it, by Mayor Hackett, on the part of Captain Nieman that really didn't add anything to the films storyline but only confused it more then it already was. The strange relationship between Det. Delongpre and his daughter Leslie also put a strain on the movie in it, for the most part, not going anywhere and just bogging it down. It took the untimely and unexpected death of Det. Delongpre's dog and companion of 13 years Burt to get both father and daughter together and finally bury the hatchet that they've been swinging at each other with for over ten years. Burt's death also got the two, as the film came to an end, to sit down at the local diner and put their differences behind them over a hot and steaming cup of coffee.

Very businesslike authority with little responsibility and only a desire to keep his/her name clean - check. A veteran cop that has bad relationship with his family - check. Mafia guys that while criminals, want to do something good vigilante style - check. A sociopath and loyal mafia guy not hesitant to kill people to make an example - check. Cops' methods being less effective than the mafia guy's brutal yet very effective methods - check. A corrupt cop tying the authority, the criminals and the police together - check. Slow motion and/or jerky frame rates for showing what the actor's reaction can't - check. A serial killer whose background is explained in far too much detail, esp. using childhood abuse as the reason for everything - check. A child spree killer that is very, very non-menacing - check. Foreshadowing of the veteran cop's moral values not being what the killer deserves in the movie's and the majority of characters' opinion - check. Morally ambiguous and predictable ending thanks to the foreshadowing and the good veteran cop's coming to terms he should submit to the vigilante attitude of the majority of the characters - check. Recently saw this on TV and decided to endure it because it had Dennis Hopper in it and I could not sleep - check. Realized that was a mistake and should just have stared at the ceiling - check.