The Premonition

The payoff to the critic by the family (Hard Time) is understood as a falsity, with reference to Scarface. The visionary aspect in the title is a ruse, the bargaining point of foreknowledge is merely a communication of the plan by means of a barcode on each CD of opera recordings sent to “Lucifer’s Right Hand” in prison. One of these, Rigoletto, is the key to the entire structure of the trilogy. Thus Logan in his triple guise of artist (the Duke), student (of Allgood, in prison), and soldier (Hostage Hotel).

The two street thieves in Hard Time, who become hostage-takers in Hostage Hotel, are now brothers doing the bidding of LRH (he is on death row for killing 14 people, “but not his mother”). One of the two is in prison with him. The instrumentality of the “premonition” is to force the release of the fellow inmate (so that he can communicate LRH’s loot to the daughter now estranged from him) and to bring the daughter to her father in prison.

Cass’s first directing job reveals a mastery acquired through long experience and apprenticeship, and a decisive kinship with the latter works of J. Lee Thompson, so overlooked by critics.