cult film freak: CHARLIE SHEEN IN THE NEON-NOIR CRIME-THRILLER 'NO MAN'S LAND'

Charlie Sheen in NO MAN'S LAND Year: 1987 Rating: *****

Executive Producer Dick Wolfe's 1987 crime-thriller NO MAN'S LAND is said to have influenced the likes of THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS and before that POINT BREAK... and yet the inside-man-befriending-a-dangerous-kingpin-he's-out-to-bust device has been around since WHITE HEAT, THE STREET WITH NO NAME and countless others...

Herein the central character's second-billed D.B.Sweeney (working for timid chief-detective Randy Quaid), a lowly cop with the specific skills to go undercover as a mechanic at a stolen-car-ring garage... soon meeting young rich owner Charlie Sheen in the Hollywood Hills, starting up his broken-down dream-car and setting the bond between poor vs rich boy in rip-roaring camaraderie...

D.B. Sweeney and Charlie Sheen in NO MAN'S LAND

Sheen and Sweeney have good chemistry, and the best scenes involve both stealing Porsches from super-mall parking lots... providing the most nail-biting suspense for both the characters and the audience (not much different than Sheen's brother's edgy gig in REPO MAN)...

Narrowed into an inevitable battle between two dangerous gangs, from fast-paced car chases to slow-burn nighttime car-stalking sequences between neon-nightclub parties while two plots merge: a polar opposite friendship within a tense undercover neo-noir-style operation (as the cop gets more crooked and the criminal gets more human)... without a single dull moment in-between.