Shakedown

'Hey, Boesky, you wanna condom?' No, but the heavy black mutha sharing his cage does; such is the humour going down in NY penitentiaries, according to the man who brought you The Exterminator. Glickenhaus' state-of-the-art thriller on cracked-up, seamy New York stars the familiar unlikely duo as a legal attorney (Weller) and a renegade detective (Elliott) attempt to solve a fatal shooting between a drugs dealer and a corrupt cop. No celluloid cliché that could possibly fit into Escape from New York or Dirty Harry is left unstitched. Plenty of blood, tension, and complex stunt sequences leave precious little time to ruminate on the popcorn. This heady mix of sleaze and comic book heroes smacks of big box office bucks and a long life on the video shelf. There ain't many better accolades than that.