1986 - WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE, a violent entertaining action film.

Wanted Dead Or Alive is supposedly a continuation of the series that starred Steve McQueen as a bounty hunter.  It was essentially another Western TV show that plagued the television watching public in the late 1950's to early 1960's.  McQueen played a character named Josh Randall.  This updated film which uses the title of the series and not much else features Josh Randall's descendant Nick Randall who is also a modern bounty hunter.  But who's kidding who here.  Nick Randall is played by Dutch actor Rutger Hauer and he is supposed to be a descendant of Indiana born Steve McQueen!

This is a violent 1980's action film.  It's also almost a nostalgia piece with all that supposedly high tech 1980's hardware such as land line phones and evil Arab terrorists which our hero has to contend with.  Nick Randall lives on a boat and romances a flight attendant named Terry working on her PHD of course.  Nick's also got a cop friend who is pretty much around to give Nick information on the Arab terrorists and eventually get shot which prompts Nick into a fury of violent revenge.  Since this was an era of not trusting the United States Government, one of the agencies of the United States is cooperating with the Arabs for their own secret reasons.  Needless to say Nick will sort all of this out by killing just about everybody in sight.

 

Beside Rutger Hauer, the film has a not uninteresting cast.  Gene Simmons from "Kiss" plays the head of the evil Arabs.  Mel Harris the future star of Thirtysomething where she played the tiresome Hope Steadmen, is Hauer's girlfriend.  Robert Guillaume from Benson is a government agent helping Nick Travis out.

 

Wanted Dead Or Alive is a violent 1980's action film but I have to admit this is a very well made violent action film.  The director Gary Sherman does a good job staging all the shootings and car chases. Rutger Hauer certainly looks ruthless enough to play a bounty hunter and the whole 1980's setting makes me warm and fuzzy for the good old  movie days when the action scenes weren't created by a computer.

The film was written by Michael Patrick Goodman, Brian Taggert and Gary Sherman, the running time is 104 minutes.