Stone Cold (1991 film)

Stone Cold
File:Stone-Cold-poster.jpg Film poster for Stone Cold
Directed by	Craig R. Baxley
Produced by	Yoram Ben-Ami Walter Doniger Nick Grillo Udi Nedivi Andrew Pfeffer Gray Wichard Rick Bieber Moshe Diamant Michael Douglas Mace Neufeld
Written by	Walter Doniger
Starring	Brian Bosworth Lance Henriksen William Forsythe Sam McMurray Arabella Holzbog Richard Gant Tom Magee
Music by	Sylvester Levay
Cinematography	Alexander Gruszynski
Edited by	Mark Helfrich
Production company	Stone Group Pictures Vision International
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release dates	May 17, 1991
Running time	95 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$25 million
Box office	$9,151,887

Stone Cold is a 1991 action movie about a biker gang that is out to assassinate the district attorney and free one of their members who is on trial for murder. The movie marked the acting debut of 80s football star Brian Bosworth.

Plot

Brian Bosworth stars as Joe Huff, a tough Alabama cop who is frustrated with a system that handles criminals with kid gloves. Currently, Joe is on suspension for displaying excessive violence toward criminals.

After stopping a supermarket robbery, Joe is summoned by Agent Cunningham (Richard Gant), whom he meets in a vacant underground parking garage. Cunningham proceeds to blackmail Joe into going undercover, by threatening to turn his three-week suspension into six months without pay.

Cunningham wants Joe to go undercover in Mississippi and infiltrate "The Brotherhood," a white supremacist biker gang linked to the murders of government officials and suspected of dealing drugs to the mafia. The Brotherhood is led by a violent psychopath named Chains Cooper (Lance Henriksen).

Joe reluctantly accepts and goes undercover as "John Stone", but his job is not easy. His FBI contact, Lance (Sam McMurray) is a germophobe who does not exactly fit in with the biker crowd, and the members of the Brotherhood, especially Chains, have their doubts about "John Stone", who has seemingly come out of nowhere to get a piece of their action.

Charged with killing a man as his initiation, Huff enlists the FBI's help to carefully fake the murder and is accepted into the Brotherhood. However, Chains's right-hand man Ice Hensley (William Forsythe), does not trust him and eventually goes out of his way to expose him, with disastrous results leading to Ice being killed.

During the operation, Huff learns that the Brotherhood's ultimate goal is to eliminate Brent "The Whip" Whipperton, a District Attorney running for Governor of Mississippi, who has promised to crack down on crime within the state. They plan to use a cache of stolen military weapons to storm the Supreme Court, where one of their own is on trial for murder, and assassinate both Whipperton and the judge presiding over the case.

When Chains' girlfriend Nancy accidentally learns about Huff's identity, he confides in her, explaining that he can grant her immunity if she cooperates with the FBI. Though resistant at first, Nancy accepts his offer, but the operation fails when the man Huff had supposedly killed to gain admission to the Brotherhood suddenly returns. In retaliation, Chains shoots and kills Nancy, but plans to do away with Huff in a more spectacular fashion, by strapping a bomb to his chest and throwing him from a helicopter en route to the courthouse.

Huff manages to fight his way free and commandeer the chopper, then takes the fight inside the courthouse, where a melee erupts between the Brotherhood and the local police. After battling his way through the ranks of the gang, Huff finally comes face-to-face with Chains.

Huff easily wins the fight and leaves the gang leader in police custody, but Chains suddenly breaks free and steals an officer's gun, intending to shoot Huff. A gunshot is heard, and Chains abruptly falls to the ground, having been shot by Huff's partner Lance. Huff then marches victoriously from the courthouse.

Cast

• Brian Bosworth as Joe Huff / John Stone
• Lance Henriksen as Chains Cooper
• William Forsythe as Ice
• Arabella Holzbog as Nancy
• Sam McMurray as Lance
• Richard Gant as Cunningham
• Paulo Tocha as Bolivian

Production

Original cut was rated NC-17 because of the violence, it was cut down for R rating. Uncut version was never released and no information about what was cut is known.

In Q&A with audience after a special 35mm screening of the film in Austin's Alamo Drafthouse in 2014, Brian Bosworth talked about how original director of the movie was Bruce Malmuth but he was fired due to some "personal issues that he couldn't control which poured out on set", and his firing caused all the original backstory for Bosworth's character to be removed and changed after Craig R. Baxley was hired to direct. About 4 weeks of filming was therefore spend on scenes with Bosworth's character and his family (wife, child and sister) which in the end were completely axed out, and 4 million dollars were spend for production charges.

Reception

The movie garnered poor reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 29% of reviewers gave it a favorable review, with an average rating of 4.5 out of 10. Brian Bosworth's performance in the film earned him a Razzie Award nomination for Worst New Star.

The film was a box office flop, drawing $2.8 million in its first week. It eventually made $9 million domestically.

External links

• Stone Cold at IMDb
• Stone Cold at AllMovie