TRESPASS. Universal Pictures, 1992. Bill Paxton, Ice-T, William Sadler, Ice Cube, Art Evans, De’voreaux White, Bruce A. Young. Director: Walter Hill.

   There are movies that grow on you. Movies that seem only so-so while you’re watching them for the first time, but as the days go on, you start thinking more and more about what you saw — the characters and the scenes they played and appreciating them — but it’s only when you look back that you begin to realize how well they may have been done.

   And then there are, on the other side of the coin, movies that you enjoyed immensely while you were watching hem, but when it comes time to writing up your thoughts about them as I am now, you can’t find anything to say about it. Not a single scene sticks out. Just a general sense of solid film-making, you think, but — how solid could it have been if there’s nothing there that makes you want to tell other people about it?

   Here’s the basic plot line. Two semi-redneck firemen from Arkansas, both white, come up to a deserted factory in East St. Louis and a cache of gold hidden there for years. Unknown to them, it’s also the site of a gangland execution, which by chance, at the right place at the wrong time, they happen to witness.

   And once seen, all chaos breaks out. Luckily for them, they have a hostage — the younger brother of the leader of the gang. Lots of fire power ensues. Lots. This is an action thriller par excellence. But not an iota of characterization. None. The only performance I remember is that of Art Evans, an actor whose name I did not know before, who plays a elderly black squatter in the factory, comically caught between the two warring factions.

   End of review.