Very Cool!!!

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It is quite hard to enjoy "Two Minute Warning." I felt I needed a two minute warning before I saw this film! The story of a sniper killing members of the public?? I'd like to kill the bloke who wrote this! The plot is a senseless one and poorly put together. The action doesn't begin properly until about 25 minutes before the end so we have 85 minutes worth of the football crowds roaring themselves silly at the game they are watching and a bunch of actors with little to do. Walter Pidgeon was completely wasted - he didn't have a word of dialogue and was only in a few camera shots. What on earth was the point in having him included in the first place? David Janssen (T.V's Richard Kimble) doesn't look very well in his wasted appearance. He only lived another 4 years after the release of this movie and was becoming largely forgotten. Perhaps his agent could have steered him clear of making rubbish like "Two Minute Warning." Jack Klugman (minus the dead animal on his head) was making his hit television show "Quincy M.E" at the time, so at least he had something of genuine quality to focus on. Charlton Heston only has to show off his He-Man look and you know he shall save the day! Having rather nasty violence thrown into the mixture isn't enough to compensate for a poor story. Someone associated with this film clearly thought that to include repellent details of people being wasted by a mad sniper, was enough to guarantee good box office. Well I'm sorry but that was not the case here! I couldn't have cared less once some of the crowds were being wiped out, good bloody riddance to them. The 1977 Hollywood movie of "Black Sunday" with the one and only Robert Shaw, had a very similar scene involving a football match. However, that latter film has a darn sight more going for it as well as having a good plot and suspense. "Two Minute Warning" may well satisfy your average,cheap thrill-seeker but I look for something a bit more substantial.

Audiences in 1976 had gotten so cynical to the "disaster movie" cycle that not even a distressing premise such as this raised any eyebrows: as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum prepares for a big football game between L.A. and Baltimore, a sniper climbs unnoticed to the Coliseum's tower overlooking the stadium and prepares to start firing (he conveniently has raw meat in his pockets, to distract the guard dogs!). One of those all-star calamities in which each of the famous actors get about 10 minutes apiece on-screen before their fates are revealed. David Janssen and Gena Rowlands are standouts as a happily squabbling couple, Jack Klugman is hammy and colorful as a gambler in debt to mobsters, but headliner Charlton Heston walks through his role as the police captain. Director Larry Peerce, never a filmmaker interested in subtlety or sensitivity, was probably the perfect man to film Edward Hume's crass screenplay, adapted from George LaFountaine's novel. Reworked extensively for network television (to soften the impact); that version credited to the non-existent Gene Palmer. *1/2 from ****

An all-star cast led by Charlton Heston with likes of John Cassavetes, Martin Balsam, Beau Bridges, Mitchell Ryan and Jack Klugman feature in this well directed, but thinly written semi-disaster fare that never goes beyond its one-dimensional framework. Its central focus follows that of an unknown sniper planning a massacre at a championship football game at the Los Angeles Coliseum, as the coming and going personal dramas of certain people at the game intertwine. Slow to get going and rather one-note in its dramas never being as interesting as it should have been, but it opens up when the SWAT team enters and the sniper finally let's loose for a thrilling final third. As the joy and excitement of the match transforms into confusion and anxiety, where the stadium turns into a shooting pallor. I've read some people complaining about a lack of a motivation for the killer, but really one wasn't needed and the ambiguous nature only made its frenetic climax more effective. For most part it's a waiting game preying upon the inevitable build-up, even though the authorities know about the sniper they don't want to start a panic of hysteria. So it's a scary idea, exploitatively handled and director Larry Peerce creates a large scale look giving it an intense scope. The performances are stalwart, but no one really makes much of an impression."Lets not get too nervous about it. "

A tightly plotted group jeopardy picture featuring a mad sniper at a packed Los Angeles football stadium. This features Charlton Heston as the cop in charge and a fantastic supporting cameo from John Cassavetes as Sergeant Chris Button who leads the S.W.A.T team tasked with taking down the gunman. Also notable for use of grainy TV footage imagery of the gunman being transmitted from the Blimp covering the football game which was eerily reminiscent at the time (76) of the infamous TV coverage of the Munich Olympics hostage situation. Fantastic climax and the scenes of crowd panic at the end are brilliantly and believably executed - reminding the viewer that mass casualties in such a situation would just as likely be caused by the crowd's panicked reaction to being attacked rather than the attack itself. An overlooked gem.