Episode 139 - Split Second

100 Things we learned from film

Joining the boys this week is the unofficial third member of the Pod, Paul Payne.

This week we're talking the Thames Barrier, Bubonic Plague and insulting the insufferable Gregg Wallace.

---

Give us a quid and we'll let you vote on episodes and give you a shout out.

https://www.patreon.com/100thingsfilm

---

Split Second is a 1992 science fiction action horror film directed by Tony Maylam and Ian Sharp,[5] and written by Gary Scott Thompson. A co-production between the United States and the United Kingdom, the film stars Rutger Hauer as a burnt-out police detective obsessively hunting down the mysterious serial killer who killed his partner several years prior. The film also features Kim Cattrall, Alastair Neil Duncan, Pete Postlethwaite, Ian Dury, and Alun Armstrong.

The film was released theatrically on 1 May 1992, receiving negative reviews from critics and grossing $5.4 million[4] on a budget of $7 million.[3]

In the year 2008, global warming and heavy rainfall has left large areas of London flooded. Rookie police officer Dick Durkin is assigned to partner with Harley Stone, a burnt-out and cynical veteran homicide detective who, according to his commanding officer, survives on "anxiety, coffee, and chocolate" after being wounded while failing to prevent the death of his partner Foster by a serial killer three years previously. Now, the murders have begun again and Stone is obsessed with the case. An Oxford-educated psychologist, Durkin is ordered to stick with Stone at all times and report any unstable behavior. After investigating the scenes of several killings, they appear no closer to identifying the killer, although Stone seems to share some sort of psychic connection with him. Their only clues are that the murders seem to be linked with the lunar cycle, and that the killer takes an organ from each victim, apparently to eat them. Lab analysis of blood left during one encounter shows that the killer possesses multiple recombinant DNA strands, somehow having absorbed the DNA of its victims. Complicating matters is the return of Michelle, Foster's wife with whom Stone had an affair.

While attempting to figure out the killer's motives and pattern, Stone and Durkin begin to bond as Durkin loosens up and starts to understand Stone. Durkin hypothesizes that the killer is taunting Stone personally, following him and then killing someone at each location; Stone acquired a psychic link with the killer via the wound it dealt him. The killer then attacks a woman in Stone's apartment building, afterward kidnapping Michelle while the two detectives are downstairs. They track the killer deep into the flooded tunnels of the London Underground subway system and discover the truth: the killer is not human but a large, horrific and possibly demonic creature that is fast, savage, and bloodthirsty. Durkin figures out that Stone escaped from it ten years ago, and it is now fixated upon killing Stone, just as it previously killed Foster; each killing and "appearance" of the monster is an attempt to lure Stone closer and closer.

Finally, learning where the creature makes its lair, Stone and Durkin head to the area, armed to the teeth and relying on Stone to find the monster just as it always finds him. They emerge into an abandoned underground train station to find Michelle suspended over the water as obvious bait, but Stone frees her anyway, prompting the creature to show up. During the fight, Durkin wounds the creature's chest, allowing Stone to pull the monster's heart out and kill it. However, as the three of them leave the station, bubbles of air are seen breaking the surface of the water, suggesting that there may be more than one monster.