BLACK MOON RISING ขโมยเหาะเจาะตึก (1986) พากย์ไทย

The prime ingredients of any thriller are sheer drive and tension, and “Black Moon Rising” (citywide) has them. It may not have much underneath--the script approaches the kind of lean, existentialist, B-movie parable that Walter Hill tried in “The Driver"--but it moves like a cold rocket.

The movie is about a thief (Tommy Lee Jones) hired by the Justice Department to steal incriminating tapes from an indicted corporation. The thief is named Quint--like the ghost in “Turn of the Screw"--and before long, the screws are turned in on him.

Justice (represented by Bubba Smith) is on Quint’s neck; murderous corporate goons (led by “Fear’s” Lee Ving) are on his tail. The tapes themselves disappear when he hides them in the rear of an ultramodern, hydrodynamically powered racing auto (the “Black Moon” of the title--actually a Concordia II, designed by Montreal’s Bernard Beaujardin), which is then promptly stolen by a hot car ring.

To regain the tapes, Quint has to crack a near impregnable mid-city fortress, dozens of stories high, guarded by computerized security and a squadron of killers led by Robert Vaughn. Working with him, Quint has only a trio of amateur associates, the plans to the fortress, his endless, steely nerve--and the fatal attraction he exerts over one of the key car thieves (Linda Hamilton).

You know right away what to expect--and what not to--from “Black Moon Rising.” It’s swift and mean--a little empty perhaps, but not enough to distract you from its pleasures: the stark, brilliantly metallic gleam cinematographer Misha Suslov puts on his images, the psycho-electric jabs of the Lalo Schifrin score, the clean thrust of the plot, the furiously lucid action and the canny, almost stylized, minimalist performances of the actors (Jones, Hamilton, Vaughn, Richard Jaeckel, Keenan Wynn, Ving, Smith and the others). The movie may be shallow, but it’s also trim. It has that easy virtue of the old-line Hollywood B film: little visible excess fat.

The story and script are by John Carpenter and several others. It has the functional, Hawksian design Carpenter usually works for in his own movies--that worship of professionalism, everything in place and paced, everything orderly and interlocking. And it has Carpenter’s typical dryly caricatured paranoia. The situations are sent up slightly, though the humor doesn’t jump out at you. Even the most extreme violence seems part of an elaborate, icy-minded game. The director, Harley Cokliss (an American who’s worked mostly in British TV), doesn’t try to explode the movie past its boundaries. He keeps inside the perimeters, refining and narrowing them.

The best things about “Black Moon Rising” are the cinematography, stunts and acting.

Suslov’s shots have the economical virtuosity John Alton used to show in B classics like “Raw Deal” and “T-Men.” He gives the whole movie a virtuosic sheen; his lighting is so bleak and deep, the movie looks as if it would freeze your fingers.

Tommy Lee Jones seems the perfect hero for this kind of movie. We know he can give us more than he does here--more depth and emotion--so Quint always suggests he has a mental and moral edge on his opponents. The movie sometimes even makes a virtue out of its sparse dialogue and cynical professionalism: Jones and Linda Hamilton do one quick nocturnal introduction, over her car hood, that nicely captures the no-nonsense badinage of a pair who know all the sexual moves and can reduce them to a few brisk openings.