Powers Boothe

  • Walter Hill – Extreme Prejudice (1987)

    Walter Hill1981-1990ActionCrimeUSA

    Quote:
    Modern-day Texas Ranger Jack Benteen (Nick Nolte) was once the best friend of local drug kingpin Cash Bailey (Powers Boothe). At present, however, the only element linking them together is Jack’s lover Sarita (Maria Conchita Alonso), Cash’s former mistress. When Sarita tires of Jack’s Spartan lifestyle, she returns to Cash as a voluntary hostage to make certain that Jack keeps his hands off Cash’s operation. The film comes to a head during a meticulously planned drug bust, in which both Jack and Cash butt heads with CIA-funded paramilitary Maj. Paul Hackett (Michael Ironside, who isn’t all he seems to be).Read More »

  • Walter Hill – Southern Comfort (1981)

    1981-1990ActionThrillerUSAWalter Hill

    Quote:
    A squad of National Guards on an isolated weekend exercise in the Louisiana swamp must fight for their lives when they anger local Cajuns by stealing their canoes. Without live ammunition and in a strange country, their experience begins to mirror the Vietnam experience.Read More »

  • Stephen Gyllenhaal – Family of Spies AKA Secret Agent (1990)

    Drama1981-1990Stephen GyllenhaalUSA

    Fact based story of John A. Walker, Jr., a Navy chief petty officer with access to top secret cryptographic communications. As a result of mounting debts, he sold secrets to the Soviets in 1967, a practice that he continued thereafter. He further sought to involve his four children into the espionage until his wife caught onto his activities.Read More »

  • William A. Graham – Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980)

    1971-1980DramaTVUSAWilliam A. Graham

    This two-part TV movie was, of course, sparked by the November 1978 mass suicide of 913 people at the South American religious “colony” of Jonestown. The catalyst for this tragedy was cult-leader Reverend Jim Jones (played by Powers Boothe, who won an Emmy for his performance), head of the so-called People’s Temple. The film traces the life of Jones from his days as an idealistic 1960s activist. He drifts into penny-ante confidence scams and bed-hops from woman to woman, before electing to pass himself off as a modern messiah–eventually believing his own feverish sermons. The climactic scenes are chillingly staged in a near-documentary fashion, with Puerto Rico and Georgia substituting for Guyana. Ned Beatty plays the ill-fated Representative Leo Ryan, while James Earl Jones has a cameo as 1930s religious-leader Father Divine; most of the other main characters are composites of real people. Originally broadcast April 15 and 16, 1980, The Guyana Tragedy was adapted by Ernest Tidyman from the Washington Post and Charles A. Krause’s Guyana Massacre: An Eyewitness Account.Read More »

  • John Boorman – The Emerald Forest (1985)

    1981-1990ActionDramaJohn BoormanUnited Kingdom

    Synopsis by Hal Erickson
    The Emerald Forest is based on a true story, as related by Los Angeles Times correspondent Leonard Greenwood. Powers Boothe stars as Bill Markham, a US engineer working on a dam project in the Amazonian jungles. Bill’s young son, Tomme (played by director John Boorman’s son Charley Boorman) is kidnapped in the rain forest by a tribe called “The Invisible People” because of their skills at camouflage – a group that has reportedly never experienced contact with Caucasians. Read More »

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