Trespass is a 1992 American action film directed by Walter Hill and starring Bill Paxton, Ice Cube, Ice-T, and William Sadler. Paxton and Sadler star as two firemen who decide to search an abandoned building for a hidden treasure but wind up being targeted by a street gang.
Trespass was written years earlier by a pre-Back to the Future Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale.
Plot
Two Arkansas firemen, Vince and Don, meet a hysterical old man in a burning building. The old man hands them a map, prays for forgiveness, then allows himself to be engulfed in flames. Outside the fire and away from everyone else, Don does a little research and finds out that the man was a thief who stole a large amount of gold valuables from a church and hid them in a building in East St. Louis. The two decide to drive there, thinking they can get there, get the gold, and get back in one day.
While looking around in the abandoned building, they are spotted by a gang, led by King James, who is there to execute an enemy. Vince and Don witness the murder, but give themselves away and only manage to force a stalemate when they grab Lucky, King James' half-brother. Barricading themselves behind a door, they continue trying to find the gold. Adding to their troubles is an old homeless man, Bradlee, who had stumbled in on them while they were trying to find the gold.
King James eventually calls in some reinforcements. While doing some reconnaissance, Raymond, the man who supplies guns to King James, finds Don and Vince's car and the news of the gold, and figures out why "two white boys" would be in their neighborhood. Raymond manipulates Savon, one of James' men (who would rather just kill Don and Vince than follow James' approach of trying to talk to them) into shooting at Don and Vince. Lucky says he needs to have shot of heroin from his drug bag he had on him as he starts to cough continuously. Don releases one of Luckys arms so he can use the syringe but instead stabs Don in the neck and tries to escape. Vince and Lucky get into a struggle and then one of James men spots the struggle through the window and takes aim with a sniper rifle which eventually leads to Lucky being shot by accident. (Savon: "I guess he wasn't too lucky, huh?") King James is now furious and runs after Don and Vince, who have now found the stash of gold (having determined the map was drawn with the intention of looking UP at the ceiling, instead of down at the floor) and are trying to get out with it while avoiding King James.
Vince orders Bradlee to take the weakened Don into the other room and lock themselves while he climbs up the chimney to get some help. Once up on the roof, Vince repels down the building but James spots him and before he can shoot Vince, Vince crashes through the window of another floor and escapes down the stairs. Meanwhile Bradlee accidentally makes a noise, drawing the attention of one of James men, Wickey grabs an axe and breaks down the door. Wickey is then ambushed by the now recovered Don who then takes his gun and Don is confronted by James. Don and James end up shooting and killing each other. Savon and Raymond also kill each other. The building they were in gets burned to the ground. Vince encounters Bradlee outside the building, and Bradlee tells Vince to run. (Vince cannot drive away, since Raymond ripped out the wires in his engine, gave him four flat tires, and cut the line to his CB radio). Once Vince is out of the way, Bradlee picks up the haul of gold that was left behind and walks away, laughing.
Cast
In addition, Hal Landon Jr. appears as Eugene DeLong, while James Pickens Jr. and L. Warren Young portray police officers Reese and Foley, respectively.
Production
Development
The script was originally called The Looters and Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale wrote it in the 1970s. Years later, Neil Canton showed it to director Walter Hill. Hill says he liked the script "enormously":
I was quite surprised because it's certainly not the kind of story that Zemeckis and Gale identified with... but I thought it was enormously primal, elemental, brutal, and a great confrontation. It was totally dependent upon the narrative circumstances to reveal character and of course it took place in a time compression—both are things I'm very fond of.
Hill was a writer and tended to work on the scripts of all his films: