Under Oath (USA, 1997) 92 min color DIR: Dave Payne. PROD: Cheryl Parnell. SCR: Scott Sandin. MUSIC: Roger Neill. DOP: Mike Mickens. CAST: Jack Scalia, James Russo, Eddie Velez, Richard Lynch, Clint Howard. (Concorde-New Horizons)
Once Roger Corman sold New World Pictures and began his Concorde-New Horizons production company, he flooded the “direct to video” market with low-budget genre fare, favouring quantity over quality. As such, very few of these pictures would ever be considered a “future classic”, but Under Oath comes pretty darn close. This is a rock solid film noir that updates the 70s formula of disgruntled blue collar cops trying to make it big, to a milieu similar to LA Confidential, where it seems everyone up the city ladder is corrupt. Hard-working cops Jack Scalia and Eddie Velez are ticked off because they do not get the raise that city hall promises them, so they decide to make some extra cash by selling some stolen guns to an arms dealer. Naturally things go wrong, and after a botched hostage attempt, it turns out that a man who was shot in the skirmish was an undercover police officer! Adding to the dilemma, these two cops are assigned to investigate this very case! While city hall puts the squeeze on the men to deliver a suspect, their attempts to cover their tracks of any involvement in the incident further gets them into trouble. Like any classic noir of the 40s and 50s, this film shows the ease in which someone can get mired in a situation from which there seems to be no reasonable means of escape. But it also has a 1970s working-class sensibility (perhaps its closest cousin would be the much more light-hearted 1973 film, Cops and Robbers): you actually feel for these guys, and sympathize with their plot to do something for themselves after being screwed by the system they believed in. Director Dave Payne and screenwriter Scott Sandin go a long way with mood and solid characterizations. The few locations (the station, a few warehouses, a strip of highway) compliment the world which constricts them, and the sepia cinematography by Mike Mickens adds to the oppressive atmosphere. This winner also features Richard Lynch in a rare good guy role, but his police chief is just as scary as his villains.
Originally published in The Roger Corman Scrapbook.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.