John Frankenheimer was happy to admit that he never met a conspiracy plot he didn’t like, and it’s hard to criticize him for it since he made some of the greatest paranoid thrillers; including The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seconds (1966). Things thinned out in later years, but at least he never made fluff just for a quick buck; he always strove to get attached to projects that would not only sustain his interest but allow him to do what he did best. In Dead-Bang, Don Johnson plays an L.A. detective whose personal life is such a mess that he plunges headlong into his work to keep himself sane. Investigating the murder of a fellow cop and friend, he follows the culprits across the country and uncovers a militant white supremacist group in the process. This film’s action scenes are effective but it is really redeemed by its harsh sense of humor, as Johnson is such a mess – (beset with restraining orders from his wife and competency reviews at work) – that he barely cares about the morality of his targets' (or his own) methods. In the film’s most famous scene, he chases down a suspect and promptly vomits on him due to being so out-of-shape.
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