Peter Hyams was a journeyman in the Hollywood system, and he had a few decent flicks. Despite being a director, a writer, and his own cinematographer for much of his career, I never got a huge directorial signature from him. His films were usually decent but never amazing. To me he's the very definition of average. If he worked during the Studio era he probably would have cranked out three or four genre movies a year.
He wrote or co-wrote eight of his films, as well as a couple he didn't direct from the first part of his career (the Chuck Bronson flick
Telefon and Steve McQueen's last picture
The Hunter). In his filmography he had a sequel that was disowned by the creator of the iconic original (
2010) and a couple straight remakes (
Narrow Margin and
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt), but mostly what he made were pretty straightforward genre efforts, including three Jean-Clade VanDamme movies. A few of the flicks in his filmography had some high-concept ideas (the faked Mars landing of
Capricorn One, reworking the themes of
High Noon on a moon of Jupiter for
Outland, a couple is transported inside the worlds of their television in
Stay Tuned, the cop who has to fight the Devil himself to prevent the birth of the Anti-Christ in
End of Days, etc.). But even when the material was unusual or inherently interesting, he never seemed to mine it for all it was worth, and most of his movies just bleed together for me in a big old blur of "meh".
Outland, though not as inventive nor deep as the best Sci-Fi of its era, I would probably agree is his best overall movie. It's nowhere as densely designed and atmospheric as Ridley Scott's
Blade Runner nor as tense and masterful as Scott's
Alien, which sandwich
Outland chronologically, but for what it is, with the combo of the claustrophobic moonbase setting and the acting led by Connery, it's a good B-movie.
But that a good movie not anywhere near as good as the great
Alien, Blade Runner, or
The Thing (all made around the same time period) is his "best" tells you all you need to know about Hyams' career, I think.
As far as remakes go,
Narrow Margin is a good one. The update was largely unnecessary, since the original 1952 movie starring Charles McGraw plays great, but it is well shot, since it was still the era before cellphones the updating works, and the presence of Hackman and James B. Sikking especially make it fun.
Running Scared came out a couple years after
Beverly Hills Cop and the year before
Lethal Weapon and is a more than solid entry in the buddy cop genre of the '80s. Siskel & Ebert, native Chicagoans, knocked it for misusing some of the local geography and for some cheap looking fake snow, but those kinds of things aside Crystal and Hines have great chemistry together and it works better as a comedy with a dose of action than the other way around. Not a megahit, not a disaster. Hyams is responsible for helping to create the subgenre with
Busting back in 1974. It and Richard Rush's
Freebie and the Bean tried to capture some of the buddy tone from
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and transplant it to modern day city cops. All such efforts in the '70s tended to have some tone problems, balancing the comedy and the brutality of their plots. It was
48 Hrs. and especially
Beverly Hills Cop that really refined and then perfected the formula. But for me
Running Scared is one of the good ones.
2010: The Year We Make Contact is nowhere near the class if Kubrick's
2001: A Space Odyssey, OBVIOUSLY. But once you get past those expectations, as a space thriller that happens to have characters from the earlier masterpiece, it's not bad. Lithgow, Balaban, Scheider, and Helen Mirren all do well with the material.
Stay Tuned, which was going to be a Tim Burton movie, is Hayams' first real swing and miss, for my taste. I mean
Hanover Street is an expensive dud, Harrison Ford's first real starring effort after the mega-success of
Star Wars, but while dull it's difficult for me to call it awful. But
Stay Tuned I am comfortable saying it is awful.
I believe the only Hyams movies I haven't seen are
Sound of Thunder, Our Time, and
Enemies Closer. This is how I'd rank the rest...
1.
Outland
2.
Running Scared
3.
Narrow Margin
4.
2010: The Year We Make Contact
5.
The Presidio
6.
Timecop
7.
Capricorn One
8.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
9.
Sudden Death
10.
The Star Chamber
11.
Busting
12.
The Relic
13.
Peeper
14.
Hanover Street
15.
The Musketeer
16.
End of Days
17.
Stay Tuned
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