bux THE RAP, the book this movie was 'based' on was one of the most difficult books I've ever read. Yet I could not put it down. Raunchy, crude, foul, lewd...you name it, it had it. It also had some of the best characterizations of any novel I've ever read.Well, as for the flick...it was deplorable. I mean, Tim Mcintire as Wasco? Wasco was the baddest mutha...talking 'bout WASCO...Mcintire as Wasco is like casting Tim Conway as Charles Manson.What happened to the MAIN character in the book? Little Arv. He doesn't even exist in the movie...Fast Walking WAS NOT the main dude in the book. Why even name credit this thing with THE RAP? None of the spirit, atmosphere, nastiness, or drama of the book was captured in this movie.For me it was not only a disappointment, but a total waste of time and celluloid.

dweddle3 I loved this movie, one of James Woods' best. I certainly agree with the other reviewer about Kay Lenz, the woman is ravishing. It has a gritty, sleazy feel to it that reminds me of "To Live and Die In L.A.".. .. it's realistic, in other words. Kay Lenz was striking in this movie, I thought she was about the sexiest woman alive for years after watching this. The guy that played WASCO was really good too, and lots of underground prison slang in the movie..it's got that real feel to it... It reminds me of the movie "Colors".. or "Miami Vice" .. and mirrors the drug scene in California, indeed, in America. It's a gray movie.. without any real heroes. Reminds me of real life!

Woodyanders One of the most exquisitely trashy -- and hence best -- seriocomic crime/prison movies to ever ooze onto celluloid. James Woods, that splendidly spacey, spastic, spindly stringbean who's turned sleazily engaging pent-up intensity into something of a modern science, is very much in his usual mondo nutzoid element as Frank "Fast Walking" Miniver, a lazy, dissolute, laid-back, don't-give-a-s**t-about-nothing, weed-toking, on the take Texas jail-house guard who's got his fingers in several filthy pies: he runs dope for cunning, calculating, double-dealing control freak top con Wasco (a magnificently lordly, mesmerizing, darkly charismatic characterization by the late, great Tim McIntire), helps Susan Tyrell run a south-of-the-border brothel, and has been hired by opposing racial factions to either protect or bump off powerful black civil rights leader Robert Hooks.The bang-up supporting cast smokes in no uncertain terms: a sensationally sassy'n'sexy Key Lenz as McIntire's fiery, fetching hot tramp main squeeze, M. Emmet Walsh, who scuzzes it up with his customary rip-snorting aplomb as the crooked chief of security; and a beautifully battered Timothy Carey as a foolishly obdurate elderly felon with exclusive dibs on the behind bars drug trade (McIntire's fabulously flamboyant spiel in which he explains to Carey how he's going to claim a monopoly on all the drug trafficking and bust it wide open by catering to the individual whims of each ethnic group serving time in the pokey is a real gem), plus colorful bits by such reliable thespians as Lance LeGault (as the ramrod captain of the guard who's itching to fire Woods), K. Callan, Sandy Ward (as the ineffectual warden) and the chronically geeky Sydney Lassick. Writer/director James B. Harris never makes a single misstep, tossing in enough seedy subplots, assorted sordid antics, startling plot twists, and smack dead on the money exploitation movie ingredients (wall-to-wall nudity, sex, illicit narcotics of every kind, seething racial tension, profanity-ridden dialog, lowbrow raunchy jokes -- y'know, the whole gnarly'n'nasty nine yards) to keep this delectably decadent doozy constantly entertaining throughout. Moreover, we've got Lalo Schifrin's flavorful jump band blues score, smashingly clear-eyed cinematography by King Baggott, a uniquely twisted sense of black-as-midnight goof-ball humor, and, natch, even a pervasively cynical and nihilistic edifying moral: If you put a whole bunch of ethically lacking scumballs together under one roof they'll get worse instead of better because they can take full advantage of the opportunity to feed off one another's moral baseness like a pack of leeches. Now, how could any fervent, hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool B-movie aficionado possibly pass this baby up? Well, the answer is you just can't, because this first-rate blithely amoral treat is quite simply the authentic funky article.

tomweeks James Brawley's novel 'The Rap' was a long and beautifully written commentary on a great many things. It captured the atmosphere of its milieu (the 1960's) perfectly.Although the plot of the novel is held together by the glue of the conspiracy within the prison, the novel itself is filled with a rich cast of colorful, fully developed characters who force the reader think about all those things good novels do--life, death, love, hate, family bonds, freedom, bondage. James Woods is a fine actor, but this poor adaptation of a truly great novel was so thinly drawn that I didn't at first even recognize "Fast Walking" as having come from 'The Rap'. It's a decent little movie, but would have been better had the film makers tried to put more of Brawley's viewpoint, characters and keen observations into it. See the film first, then get a copy of 'The Rap'. If you do it the other way around as I did, you will be disappointed in the movie.