This Frankenheimer film is beautifully done. Jerry Beck is a troubled cop whose journey across states after a neo-Nazi killer also becomes a personal journey of self-discovery. The cast, headed by Don Johnson, is wonderfully played by all and even includes Evans Evans, John Frankenheimer's wife and widow, in a chilling performance. (Yes,you read right, her name is really Evans Evans and she was married to JF for 39 years as well as being a terrific character actress mainly through the 1960s and 1970s.) There are many other cast surprises in what is a surprisingly grippingly tense and efficient thriller. This is a great Frankenheimer film, right up there with his best. I cannot speak too highly about Don Johnson and the Nazi villain of the piece. They give this film both tension and comic relief in what are beautifully measured performances. This is an 80s classic by one of cinema's great directors.

Don Johnson is pretty decent in this (and I'm a fan), though you could see the whole idea was to take the Crockett character from Miami Vice and make him a down-and-outer, to take away all the expensive trappings he had on Miami Vice.The biggest plot hole is that the bad guy kills a cop at the beginning of the movie, pretty much on Christmas Eve. Yet there is no big mobilization of the LA police force to catch the killer, just Beck going after him alone. In every other movie I've ever seen, and pretty much in real life, if a cop is killed in cold blood like this character was, every cop is going to be after the killer.Then, when the rural OK sheriff's cars are shot up with automatic weapons, and the downtown is blown up in a huge shootout with the bad guys, again, no-one really seems to interested. Not the LA police force, not the FBI that much. Usually these kind of egregious acts of violence get pretty big play in the media and with law enforcement types. So that whole premise was rather hard to swallow, although it says it's based on a true story.Interesting cameo by the porno star Ron Jeremy as one of the bikers. Several of the cast were on Miami Vice at one time or another.

(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.

I missed this movie entirely during its original release but recently caught in on late night cable. Must say I was pleasantly surprised. The coolest thing about this movie was how it foreshadowed actual crime events that would happen later at places like Ruby Ridge and Mt. Carmel. And of course it was hilarious to see Johnson get to reprise his tough guy problem child Sonny Crocket type role. My favorite scene was when he enlists the straight-laced probation officer to serve in lieu of a warrant. Hilarious trick - made me wonder if that really works in real life. And the puking ruled. The one downer in this movie is that the gun fighting scenes were not produced well enough to convey the true sense of fear and danger, and the tactics employed made them look more like actors than gunfighters. This is usually the sign of a limited budget, which this movie probably had.