1994's The Chase is an Amiable Goof. Too Bad About Stars Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson, However
I decided to devote 2024 to exploring the films 1994 because an unusual number of great and important and just plain fascinating movies were released during those extraordinary eight months.
But I’m also fueled by nostalgia. I’m fascinated by even the stinkers I’ve been watching for this column because they take me back to a place in my life and intellectual development that I have tremendous fondness for.
I was eighteen in 1994, didn’t have a care, working for peanuts, not a dime to spare.But I was lean and solid everywhere, like a rock, My hands were steady, my eyes were clear and bright.My walk had purpose, my steps were quick and light. And I held firmly to what I felt was right.
Actually those are the lyrics to Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock.” I also look back longingly at my eighteenth year but holy shit was I trainwreck. If I were to write a song like that it’d have lyrics like, “I didn’t know it but I was autistic and had ADHD, I was depressed all the time and masturbated compulsively.” That’s not quite as likely to get played on oldies radio.
The movies of 1994 had no nostalgic appeal for me in 1994. Why would they? They weren’t thirty year old movies from my adolescence or twenty year old movies or even a year old: they were new releases I rented to the good people of Rogers Park via my job as a clerk at Blockbuster.
Adam Rifkin’s The Chase is one of many of the films of 1994 that I will always associate with my job working at Blockbuster, one of the highlights of my traumatic teen years.
It wasn’t a terribly creative or original poster. It shows stars Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson looking at us with a look of smoldering intensity, Swanson’s arm draped over Sheen’s shoulder suggestively. Their giant heads float above the image of a lonely car on the road.
It’s a poster that truly says, “This is a movie that stars the extremely attractive movie stars Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson in which maybe they do sex stuff?”
Here’s the thing about Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson in 1994: if you had an opportunity to have sex with someone who looked like them it would be a huge turn on. If you were to knock boots with someone with their personalities, however, it would be a huge turn off.
The Chase’s fatal flaw is that its stars are even more unlikable than they are supposed to be. While the passage of time has lent the movie a fun, goofy retro element, mainly via its soundtrack and colorful supporting cast, it has not made it easier to root for Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson.
Swanson is known fuzzily these days primarily for her terrible political opinions and support for Donald Trump rather than her acting career.
I’ve seen two of her recent projects. In one she voiced an annoying little dog in Pawparazzi. In another she starred opposite in Courting Mom and Dad, a Christian anti-divorce message movie costarring Scott Baio that ended up accidentally making an excellent case for ending marriages when they’re loveless and desiccated. Neither gave me hope for Swanson’s future as an actor.
Sheen, meanwhile, is the Caligula of Hollywood, a famously debauched figure who has terrorized the women of Hollywood and generally wreaked drug-fueled havoc. They’re not the most lovable twosome, then or now.
Sheen stars in The Chase as Jack Hammond. He’s a wrongfully convicted convict who escaped during a prison transfer and stole a car. When he sees cops at a convenience store he panics and takes rich girl Natalie Voss (Kristy Swanson) hostage.
Natalie is the daughter of mogul Dalton Voss (Ray Wise), who is described as the Donald Trump of California. That had a much different connotation back in 1994 when Trump was just a flashy rich guy and not an existential threat to democracy and the future of our nation.
Jack almost instantly becomes huge news. He’s pursued by the stars of a Cops-like reality show featuring Officer Hobbs (Henry Rollins) and Officer Figus (Josh Mostel) but as news of his criminal misadventures spread he’s pursued by an ever-growing convoy of cop cars.
When Dalton Voss learns that his sheltered offspring has been abducted he becomes apoplectic and puts pressure on the police to make finding her priority number one.
The Chase was released before the infamous O.J. Bronco chase, which lends it an element of prescience. The Chase is most enjoyable while observing the media circus that ensues when a man facing a lifetime behind bars kidnaps and abducts the daughter of one of our country’s richest men.
Rifkin didn’t have much of a budget for The Chase but he manages to squeeze an impressive amount of Blues Brothers-style vehicular slapstick into the proceedings all the same. My favorite gag involves a truck that keeps inelegantly dropping body bags with corpses inside all over the highway.
Sheen and Swanson are almost impressively unlikable performers. They’re even more unlikable as people. The Chase doesn’t do them any favors by casting them as, respectively, an aggressive jerk and a spoiled brat.
Romantic comedy formula calls for the leads to hate each other at first sight but then to grow closer through shared experiences and common tribulations until hate has turned inevitably to love and lust.
The Chase manages to do all of that without its leads ever getting out of the car. The escapee and the heiress grow so close that, in what I confidently say is probably the only thing most people remember about the film, beyond its totally 1994 soundtrack features the hottest alt-rock hits from NOFX, Bad Religion, Rancid and Rollins Band, they somehow manage to have sex while Jack continues to drive the car.
It’s hotter than a PG-13 rating should probably allow. The film gets better when Jack and Natalie stop squabbling and bickering and begin contemplating an impossible future together.
1994 saw the release of many important films. The Chase is not one of them. It’s an agreeable enough time waster but it should be a lot sharper and would benefit from more sympathetic leads.
The Chase is incredibly dated. That’s what I dig most about it at this point. It takes me back to the increasingly distant past, when the future looked confusing and uncertain and movies, even silly movies like this, were my escape and my salvation.
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