Two Minute Warning

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Allan C Part of the 70s disaster film cycle, this thriller has a faceless sniper climbing the tower at the Los Angeles Coliseum during an NFL game and about to take out victims at any moment. The president is en route to the game, and the mayor is in the audience. Once the sniper is spotted, the LAPD must figure out how to stop the sniper without inciting a riot, with police captain Charlton Heston holding back trigger-happy SWAT commander John Cassavetes, who gets to take over at the titular two-minute warning. As with most 70s disaster films, whether it's an airplane about to crash or a burning skyscraper, there's a cast of stars, past and present. Besides Heston and Cassavetes, you have  Beau Bridges, Jack Klugman, Mitchell Ryan, Gena Rowlands, and David Janssen as football game spectators, each with their own subplot. There's also Walter Pidgeon in his final film role as a pickpocket working the game. The funniest bit of casting is Andy Sidaris as the football game TV director, which he was in real life, having distinguished himself by directing multiple Super Bowls and the premiere episode of ABC's Wide World of Sports. What makes it funny is that Sidaris is most famous for his 80s and 90s film work, most notably his "Triple B" series of films (Bullets, Bombs, and Babes), which typically featured Playboy Playmates and B-list stars such as Erik Estrada or Buff Bagwell. There are a lot of other familiar faces, including Robert "EXTERMINATOR" Ginty, Brock "SOYLENT GREEN" Peters, David "LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING" Groh, not to be confused with Dave Grohl, and many other faces people of a certain age will recognize. TWO-MINUTE WARNING is an exciting balance of suspense and police procedural. Heston is super cool in his police shades, even when he's delivering some unintentionally hilarious dialogue about the sniper hitting a maintenance man with his rifle butt, telling Cassavetes, "he butt-stroked a maintenance man off a 60-foot ladder." Making it even more hilarious, they continue to say how he "butt-stroked" the maintenance man several more times! One element that really does work well for the film is that the violence really is pretty shocking. For a film made in 1976, when the sniper shoots a random person on the street at the start of the film, it's both brutal and shocking, laying the groundwork for the suspense during the rest of the film when the sniper looks down his scope at random fans and players in the LA Coliseum. A major complaint by critics upon its initial release is that there's no motivation or character development for the sniper. They simply show his hand, feet, and gun, never revealing even his face, let alone a reason why he's about to unleash terror upon unsuspecting men, women, and children. I felt that made the film work even better and made it all the more frightening. I have to confess that I'm a huge fan of 70s disaster films, so I may have enjoyed this film more than the average viewer, but for anyone who digs these kinds of films, it's was a whole lot of fun. FUN FACT! For the TV airing of TWO-MINUTE WARNING, they filmed 40 minutes of additional footage of a bank heist, explaining the sniper's motivation as a decoy for the robbery.   Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 07/04/25 Full Review Jonathan O Two-minute warning is an intense heartstopping thriller the cast are great the cinematography and editing are also great and the good directing but the story is somewhat okay for the characters but is very very intense climax scene and is so terrifying just like today's society. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 08/02/23 Full Review Audience Member Is a soiled suspense thriller and it could happen in real life which could be extremely terrifying to to think about it. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 08/12/21 Full Review Audience Member What a waste. Good actors like Martin Balsam and John Cassavetes marooned in an unoriginal and almost comatose "thriller" where an unidentified sniper spends an entire football game aiming at various targets while literally nothing happens. All the male figures have real issues with their wives/girlfriends and are either idiots or deeply misogynistic. Charlton Heston wears a bad wig and runs arthritically, Balsam and Cassavetes are completely wasted. Black Sunday a year or two later showed how you do this kind of thing. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/27/23 Full Review delysid d words cannot describe how much i hated watching this turd... what a piece of shit Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 02/15/19 Full Review Audience Member Solid, tense thriller where a sniper has a football stadium in the palm of his hand. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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