Striking Distance

Striking Distance is an exciting action thriller with Bruce Willis as policeman Tom Hardy, who is convinced that an innocent man has been framed for a series of murders of women in Pittsburgh. Hardy has been demoted from homicide to the river police, both because he publicly spoke his mind about the murder case and because shortly before he had testified against his partner and cousin Jimmy Detillo in a case of unnecessary use of force.

When a killer of women is once again on the loose, Tom begins to investigate the case in secret on the theory that the murderer is the very same person as years earlier. Tom also has the incentive that his father died during a failed pursuit of the killer. Tom's hypothesis that only a policeman can be the killer does not make him popular in homicide, but he gets help from his new partner, the female diver Jo Christman. Of course, it turns romantic too.

I should have been able to figure out the ending, for there is traditional set-up and pay-off in the film, which is rather scarier than expected – at the risk of disappointing Bruce Willis's regular audience, who will look in vain for the man's usual sparkling one-liners. Striking Distance is a more serious affair!