Kansas *** (1988, Matt Dillon, Andrew McCarthy, Leslie Hope) – Classic Movie Review 7330

Director David Stevens’s 1988 romantic crime thriller Kansas stars a finally clearly post-teen idol Matt Dillon (then 24), who is well cast as Doyle Kennedy, a psychopathic ex-convict who involves middle-class hitchhiker Wade Corey (Andrew McCarthy) in a bank heist.

Kansas starts strongly but starts to slide when it decides to concentrate on a dull romance between McCarthy and a rich farm girl, Lori Bayles (Leslie Hope).

However, Spencer Eastman’s morally ambivalent screenplay and Dillon’s increasingly unhinged performance help to make this oddball thriller consistently watchable.

Kansas also features Brent Jennings, Kyra Sedgwick, Harry Northup, Arlen Dean Snyder, Brynn Thayer, Alan Toy, Andy Romano, Clint Allen, Jim Lovelett, Louis Giambalvo, Craig Benton, James Lea Raupp, John Lansing, Gale Mayron, Timothy Max Graham and Annie Kellogg.

Spencer Eastman died the same year, on 19 April 1988, aged 47.

RIP David Stevens, who died on 17 July 2018, aged 78. He was also the writer of Breaker Morant (1980) and The Sum of Us (1994) and director of The Clinic (1982).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7330

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