48 Hrs | 1982
- Locations |
- San Francisco, Los Angeles, California
- DIRECTOR |
- Walter Hill
Walter Hill's film is set in San Francisco but once the setting is established in the first half of the film, much of the rest is filmed around Los Angeles.
The typical tough, no-nonsense direction from Walter Hill keeps the action tightly framed, maintaining clear focus on the narrative while also keeping the Los Angeles settings suitably vague.
The prologue sets up Ganz (James Remar) being violently sprung from a prison work gang by his criminal associate Billy Bear (Sonny Landham), which was filmed on the Sierra Railroad at Warnerville, about 20 miles northeast of Modesto, California.
But they're soon in San Francisco on the trail of a stash of money owed by former accomplice Luther (David Patrick Kelly), kidnapping his girlfriend until he pays up.
They're about to cross paths with Det Cates (Nick Nolte) who's presently dealing with balancing the needs of his job with those of his girlfriend Elaine (Annette O'Toole) while he's staying at her place, 450-452 Vallejo Street at the top of Vallejo Stairs in North Beach. He drives down Vallejo into the city where his day is about to go badly wrong.
He joins a couple of other 'tecs in searching the sleazy 'Walden Hotel' – which turns out to be the one in which Ganz and Billy are holed up. In reality, this was once a high-end hotel in Nob Hill where San Francisco high society clubs would gather. Built in 1911, it was the first luxury residential building to rise after the 1906 earthquake. It's now the rather smart Keystone Apartments, 1369 Hyde Street at Washington Street.
When Ganz escapes after having shot one of the cops dead with Cates' gun, the case becomes personal.
The premise of the plot involves Cates getting – not strictly by the book – a former pal of Luther released from prison for 48 hours to help track down the bad guys.
To this end, Cates drives across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge toward the notorious San Quentin Prison, which we can see in the distance. But that's as close as we get.
Once he arrives, we're suddenly in Los Angeles. The corridors and cells are those of dependable old Lincoln Heights Jail, 401 North Avenue 19, Lincoln Heights – a long-closed facility that's become a regular screen lock-up from the 1954 A Star Is Born (the drunk tank in which James Mason is kept) to A Nightmare on Elm Street (for which it supplied the boiler room).
Cates signs out the feisty Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy) who soon leads him – in the real San Francisco – to Luther's place, 65-67 Woodward Street at 14th Street, in the Mission District, where Luther's attempt to make a run for it is stopped when he crashes full into a car door smart opened by Hammond.
The ill-matched pair set off to visit a redneck bar in San Francisco's 'Mission District' where Billy sometimes worked behind the bar, but the exit ramp from the cop station up which they drive is another familiar LA location, on Grand Street at the rear of the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, Downtown LA (that's the Biltmore which became the 'Beverly Palms Hotel' where Eddie Murphy stayed in Beverly Hills Cop).
It's not too far from the Biltmore to the 'Mission' bar, also in Downtown LA. This was Torchy's, 218 1/2 West Fifth Street, which closed years ago. In fact, when I first visited in 1996, it had already been converted into an electrical goods store. It currently seems to be closed but amazingly, despite all its incarnations over the years, the ridged frontage where the 'Torchy's' illuminated sign hung, is still recognisable.
It stands in a busy part of town for filming, standing alongside the Alexandria Hotel (John Doe's place in Se7en) and opposite N'Bushe Wright's apartment in Blade.
Getting a tip-off about Billy's girlfriend living in Chinatown, that's their next stop. But it's Los Angeles's Chinatown, and the stretch of Chung King Road seen in the big-screen Starsky & Hutch and as 'Hong Kong' in Everything Everywhere All the Time.
The festering friction between Cates and Hammond finally erupts into a full-on fist fight on the corner of West 5th Street and South Broadway. It's soon broken up, by the cops and in true Hollywood style, the many loud thuds to the face leave no trace but a slight trickle of blood on Cates' chin.
Having sort-of cleared the air, they clean up in the washroom of the garage was the old Gilmore Gas station, 859 North Highland Avenue at Willoughby Avenue, south of Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. You might recognise the 1935 landmark from LA Story, with Steve Martin. It's been preserved and lives on now as a stylish branch of Starbucks.
Hammond fesses up that he holds the money everyone is looking for, stashed in the trunk of his car for the past three years in the Allright Parking Garage in Bunker Hill – pretty much where California Plaza now stands, an area of Downtown LA rendered unrecognisable by radical redevelopment.
Luther gets there first and makes off with both car and loot, quickly arriving back in the real San Francisco where he's chased into Church Street Station at Market Street to meet with Ganz and Billy. The pair manage to board a train as Cates is frustratingly detained by cops.
We're soon back to LA where Ganz has commandeered a bus leading them on a chase through the familiar streets of Downtown before, once again, getting away.
After the traditional bawling out by his superior at the station, Cates is ordered to escort Hammond immediately back to prison.
As if that's going to happen.
The cop station they're seen exiting is LA's Hall of Justice, 211 West Temple Street, north of City Hall. Of course Cates and Hammond squeeze in one last – and successful – attempt to pin down the bad guys back in Chinatown.
No, there's no sudden pardon for Hammond after all his work and it's back to prison – although Cates slyly allows him to keep the cash in his car and even permits him a little rest and recreation with the woman he met in a bar earlier.
Her apartment, where the film ends, was the Engstrum Apartments, 623 West 5th Street. As I said, this area of Downtown LA has been seriously redeveloped and the site where her apartment stood is now occupied by the US Bank Tower (although the old Edison building alongside still remains).
So ignore the road sign for San Francisco's Bay Bridge as they drive off into the night back along 5th Street – with the rear of LA's Millennium Biltmore Hotel in the background.
