Narrow Margin

Narrow Margin is a 1990 American neo-noir action thriller film written and directed by Peter Hyams. It stars Gene Hackman and Anne Archer, with James Sikking, Nigel Bennett, Harris Yulin and J. T. Walsh in supporting roles. It was released in the United States by TriStar Pictures on September 21, 1990. Based on the 1952 film The Narrow Margin, it is the first of two RKO reimaginings by Hyams, the other being 2009's Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. The film keeps the same general story, and follows a Los Angeles deputy district attorney who attempts to keep a murder witness safe from hitmen while traveling on a train. However, it changes the moral alignment of some characters, and the setting from the Super Chief route to the Canadian Rockies. Plot In Los Angeles, divorced editor Carol Hunnicut is on a blind date at a hotel restaurant with widowed lawyer Michael Tarlow, when a waiter delivers a message for him to phone a client. Tarlow goes to his suite to make the call and invites her to come with him. While Hunnicut watches from a darkened room, the client, crime boss Leo Watts, unexpectedly arrives in person along with a gunman, Jack Wootton. Watts has learned that Tarlow stole from him and Wootton shoots Tarlow dead. Having learnt that Tarlow was Watts's lawyer, Hunnicut realizes that she is in danger. She delivers her son to his father and urges them to go into hiding, then flees to a borrowed cabin in the Canadian Rockies, telling only one person where she went and what she saw. Police sergeant Benti traces Hunnicut and gives her location to deputy district attorney Robert Caulfield. Over the objections of his boss, Caulfield charters a helicopter flight to the cabin and meets a scared Hunnicut. At this point, the group is attacked by Watts' men, the pilot and Benti both being killed.