Fact-based 1988 TV movie chronicling a crime spree by two heavily-armed and apparently psychopathic Florida bank robbers. The reason the episode gained notoriety was because the eventual FBI stop of their car went so cataclysmically wrong. The resultant close-quarters gun battle as detailed herein is one of the most hellish things I’ve ever seen; it’s difficult to believe this was produced for TV.
David Soul (Hutch from Starsky and…) and Michael Gross, who play the robbers, were known for their good-guy TV roles, and this was going against type with a vengeance. While a lot of the movie (and almost everything involving the boring FBI agents) is cardboard, these two (and particularly Soul) bring a curdled intensity to their parts.
And that gun battle…a lot of things went wrong for the FBI but the main problem they had was that the bad guys just would not die. Seeing Soul’s character – already mortally wounded and moving like a leg-dragging zombie as he continues to get hit by gunshots – advancing on wounded FBI agents who are disabled or out of ammunition, and executing them on the ground, is the absolute stuff of nightmares.
What I learned from this film
Watching movie shootouts become significantly less fun when you’re aware that the particulars are real.
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