Review: Cohen and Tate
Blu-ray: Cohen and Tate (1988)
Travis Knight is a 9-year-old boy, who along with his family, have been placed in protective custody by the FBI after witnessing the murder of a Texan mobster. Two hitmen, Cohen and Tate, are sent to retrieve Travis but, will their fractious relationship turn a seemingly simple job into a murderous rampage?
Roy Scheider plays Mr Cohen who is calm, cold, and calculated in executing his task. I agree with the makers of the movie who describe him as, “a samurai who is completely focused on what must be done.”
Tate on the other hand is a hot headed idiot who eats matches (no I’m not kidding) and has a hair trigger. He sleeps with his shotgun and thinks nothing of pointing it at a toddler. It’s fair to say that Mr Cohen clearly doesn’t like him, and an already tense situation is made worse with Travis in the middle of their constant bickering and arguments.
I’d never seen Cohen and Tate before and I must say that it is incredibly strange and equally as daft! To me Roy Scheider will always be Police Chief Brody from Jaws, so it was nice to see him playing a different type of character who is a cold blooded killer.
Probably the main issue I had with Cohen & Tate was Adam Baldwin who plays Tate. He overplays the psycho routine way too much to be taken seriously. He cries, shouts, threatens, screams, and generally gurns his way through the performance. Even the makers of the movie describe him as “over the top playing Tate as a spoilt child.” There are even times where he plays the role as The Terminator, and the movie loses any tension that it has worked hard to establish.
You also have to suspend your disbelief that a terrified 9-year-old boy could play these two cold blooded killers against each other, to the point where he is psychologically manipulating them.
In its favour Cohen & Tate has a fairly lean running time of 86 minutes and It was good to see Scheider playing a different character that I was used to but, ultimately Cohen and Tate is probably best left consigned to the 80s, where it would have found an audience on the shelves of a local video store.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
- Original stereo audio (uncompressed on the Blu-ray)
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Audio commentary by writer/director Eric Red
- A Look Back at Cohen & Tate, a retrospective documentary featuring Eric Red, cinematographer Victor J. Kemper, editor Edward Abroms, and co-stars Kenneth McCabe and Harley Cross
- Eric Red’s original storyboards for the opening farmhouse shoot-out
- Original, uncut versions of the farmhouse and oilfield shoot-outs
- Original theatrical trailer
- Extensive stills gallery
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic Kim Newman
Review by Chris (co-host of 60 Minutes With and The Same Coin) from a disc kindly supplied by Arrow Films.
