I spent the summer of 1990 working at a video store in Stoughton, Wisconsin. That may be a type of business now rapidly approaching typewriter repair on the obsolescence scale, but it was a fairly brisk shop to work in at the time. Still, there was downtime, especially during the afternoon shift, and I wound up watching a fair number of movies while waiting for customers to show up. I have no official tally to consult, but I suspect this may have been the tape that I slipped into the bulky VCR more than any other.

Hopefully that seems like an uncharacteristic choice. It should. To the best of my recollection, I’ve never actually seen that movie. In fact, I’d not seen any Steven Seagal movies at that point, a form of cinematic torture I was spared until that fall when co-hosting a movie review show necessitated my first exposure to his inane, snarling brand of action flick. No, I did not pull this VHS off the shelf to revel in the exploits of Steven Seagal and Kelly LeBrock. I grabbed it because this was at the beginning:

I wasn’t even an unapologetic fanboy for Martin Scorsese the way I am now. Indeed it was the release of Goodfellas that probably started that happy affliction brewing within me. And yet I watched that trailer over and over again. It’s not even that strong of a trailer, just barely hinting at the dynamism and richness of the film it promotes, maybe because many of the Warner Bros. executives, especially those in marketing, thought they had a dud on their hands. Something about it hooked me, though. When that piano part from “Layla” kicks in, it somehow feels like the announcement that greatness is coming. It certainly was.

I can’t believe it’s time for twentieth anniversary retrospectives.