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“Trespass” takes place almost entirely in and around a massive, abandoned factory building in East St. Louis hiding a cache of gold. Two Arkansas firemen, Vince (Bill Paxton) and Don (William Sadler), learn of this priceless stash from the last words of a man dying in a blaze who hands them an honest to goodness treasure map. It’s an urban version of “The Treasure of Sierra Madre,” in other words, in which the indigenous people, in a sense, are Black Americans and the two White Americans are, in a sense, portrayed as looters. In fact, that was the original title of director Walter Hill’s movie, “Looters,” though that had to be changed in the wake of the L.A. Riots. The summer release date had to be pushed back too. Instead, “Trespass” was released on December 25th, 1992, which somehow seems worse? I’m trying to imagine middle America families who wanted to get out of the house on Christmas Day going out to the theater, seeing “Trespass,” and then returning home and having pointed conversations about race relations while sipping eggnog around the tree.
Indeed, the abandoned building becomes nothing less than a powder keg, both figuratively and literally, as Vince and Don find themselves not only hunting treasure but on the turf of a St. Louis gang spearheaded by King James (Ice-T). And when the two firefighters a long way from home become accidental witnesses to an execution, they must find a way to escape with their lives in addition to the loot. The screenplay by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, of all people, does a fine job of frequently reorienting the stakes and throwing the additional complications and characters into the pot, like Bradlee (Art Evans), a squatter in the building who comes to see the gold as his own territorial right. On the other hand, not all the set-ups seemingly planted by the script are paid off, making for a patchy garden, so to speak, and the penchant of one gangster filming everything with a camcorder that seems to suggest bloodthirsty Reality TV never amounts to anything of significance.
I confess, Ice-T’s acting has always been a little too rough-around-the-edges for me – you can see him acting – but also, in the role of King James, when he keeps kinda squinting at these two good old boys and asking with utterly honest incredulousness, “What are you doing here,” it’s funny, like this is a fish out of water comedy turned up to 11. Vince and Don just see him as a drug dealer, but he sees himself as a businessman and his men as business associates, a proto-Stringer Bell of “The Wire” with Ice Cube’s Savon, then, as a proto-Avon Barksdale. Their dueling approaches come to a head and are further complicated by Vince and Don taking King James’s heroin addicted brother Lucky (De'voreaux White) as a hostage. That fact coupled with their tying up Bradlee to keep him quiet renders the two firefighters as something far less than noble, even if the screenplay makes next to nothing of them being firefighters in the first place. Instead, “Trespass” settles for a pervasive immorality that avoids nihilism, if barely, through Paxton letting bits and bobs of humanity seep out in his performance, flailing as his character morally drowns right in front of us. Don does not really have an epiphany, determined to get what he perceives the cruel world as owing him. But when Lucky injects him with his heroin needle to try and make an escape, he is forced to confront a world he dismisses out of turn anyway.
