Movie Review: Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987)

Genre: Vigilante Action  

Director: J. Lee Thompson  

Starring: Charles Bronson, Kay Lenz, John P. Ryan, Perry Lopez  

Running Time: 99 minutes  

Synopsis: In Los Angeles, architect and notorious ex-vigilante Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) is in a relationship with journalist Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz). When Karen's daughter Erica dies by drug overdose, Paul takes revenge on a drug pusher. He is then pressured by the wealthy Nathan White (John P. Ryan) to clean up two rival gangs controlling the cocaine trade, one led by Ed Zacharias (Perry Lopez), the other by the Romero brothers. As Paul starts eliminating gang members, police detectives close in.

What Works Well: In this surprisingly not awful third sequel, a lithe Bronson (at age 67) is an effective killing machine ridding society of vermin. The target-the-drug-cartels theme is timely and hides a couple of mildly engaging surprises. Director J. Lee Thompson stages some fairly artistic set-pieces, including the opening parkade scene, a raid on a fish plant, and a shootout at an oil derrick. Some of the dialogue exchanges contain pointy zingers.

What Does Not Work As Well: It may not be awful, but it's still quite bad. Apart from Bronson, the acting is third rate, and the editing and sound mixing are always clunky and sometimes atrocious. Of course the script never attempts to be logical, and takes itself far too seriously.

Key Quote:

Parkade would-be rapist, spotting Kersey: Who the fuck are you?!

Kersey: Death.



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Movie Review: Moving Violation (1976)

A basic car chase action film, Moving Violation lives down to elemental expectations.

Laidback Detroit autoworker Eddie (Stephen McHattie) is hitchhiking through the south and wanders into the small town of Rockfield, where he quickly tangles with redneck Sheriff Rankin (Lonny Chapman). Eddie meets local ice cream parlour girl Cam (Kay Lenz), and together they witness the corrupt Rankin shooting dead his deputy on the estate grounds of oil tycoon Mr. Rockfield (Will Geer), whose family built the town.

Eddie and Cam realize they are in deep trouble and speed off in their van, with Rankin labelling them police-murdering terrorist fugitives. Wild chases ensue with multiple police cars joining the pursuit. The befuddled Eddie and Cam eventually seek the help of lawyer Alex Warren (Eddie Albert), but clearing their names will not be easy.

Produced by low-budget master Roger Corman and his wife Julie but backed by some studio money from 20th Century Fox, Moving Violation is 90 minutes of car chases and stunts interrupted by a few awkward scenes of attempted acting. The film looks reasonably slick and meets all expectations of B-movie drive-in level "beware the hick South" themed entertainment from the era, including horrid acting, childish dialogue and cartoonish villainous characters.

The chase scenes are often comically sped up except when director Charles S. Dubin introduces slow motion shots to better highlight the key stunts, and most of the fast motoring unfolds to hillbilly banjo music and plenty of repetitive tame cussing. The drive for humour occasionally collides with Sheriff Rankin's uncompromisingly evil stance and moments of abrupt shotgun violence.

Stephen McHattie and Kay Lenz often look embarrassed, confined to grim-faced close-up reaction shots while holding onto steering wheels with no actual lines to say. Moving Violation barrels down the highway seeking every possible crash opportunity, a mind numbing but efficient demonstration of scrap metal production.

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Movie Review: The Passage (1979)

A World War Two escape thriller, The Passage features a stellar but poorly utilized cast struggling against a feeble script and the stench of a low budget production.

With France under Nazi occupation, hardy Basque sheep farmer (Anthony Quinn) is reluctantly recruited by the French resistance for a dangerous mission to smuggle American scientist Professor Bergson (James Mason) across the Pyrenees and into Spain.

Bergston is hiding in Toulouse, and the Basque is shocked to learn that the frail Mrs. Bergson (Patricia Neal) and the couple's two grown children (Kay Lenz and Paul Clemens) are accompanying their father. Meanwhile, sadistic SS Captain Von Berkow (Malcolm McDowell) is intent on hunting down the Professor. After receiving help from a gypsy leader (Christopher Lee), the escape party start their perilous journey across the snow-covered mountains, with Von Berkow in hot pursuit.

A British production directed by veteran J. Lee Thompson, The Passage collects an impressive cast and aims for an old-fashioned but smaller-scaled World War Two adventure in the vein of Thompson's The Guns Of Navarone from 1961. With a decent premise and impressive mountainous scenery supplementing the stars, the raw ingredients are promising.

But The Passage suffers from production values that appear cheap and hurried, and the script (by Bruce Nicolayson, adapting his own book) ignores everything related to backstories and personal dynamics. Most of the characters are hardly afforded a name, let alone rounded into individuals, with James Mason's Professor Bergson the primary victim. All of the dialogue is of the plastic variety, while Thompson's directing is muddled, his handling of the action scenes bordering on inept.

The void of quality is filled with shock value, and The Passage is notorious for all the wrong reasons. The main eye-popping excuse to watch the film is a misplaced Malcolm McDowell performance. His full-on British accent unexplained and unconstrained, McDowell mushes Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange with Caligula and enters World War Two with ridiculous madness. His Captain Von Berkow is an all-time over-the-top experience, a star running amok with no guidance from his director.

And Von Berkow steers The Passage to a second claim to infamy as an exercise in excess violence and gore. The SS Captain perpetuates on-screen rape, torture, immolation and mass murder, and on a couple of occasions punctuates his atrocities with pantomime-level outfits. His articulated chef chop-chop scene is admittedly compelling as an indecorous horror-comedy routine.

The Passage is thankfully a mostly forgotten curiosity, a lost opportunity buried in the jagged mountains.

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Movie Review: Physical Evidence (1989)

A limp courtroom drama with wooden performances and a forgettable story, Physical Evidence lands with an excruciatingly dull thud.

Suspended and quick-tempered police detective Joe Paris (Burt Reynolds) wakes up one morning with a hangover and no recollection of what happened the previous night. When evidence is found in his apartment linking him to the grim murder of hated nightclub owner and mobster Jake Farley, Paris is designated as the prime suspect. Inexperienced public defendant Jenny Hudson (Theresa Russell) is assigned to the case. Grizzled prosecutor James Nicks (Ned Beatty) offers a plea bargain, but Hudson is determined to prove herself by exonerating her client.

As Paris and Hudson try to uncover what happened on the night of the murder, they develop some attraction, much to the chagrin of Hudson's rich fiancé Kyle (Ted McGinley). Meanwhile, the married Deborah Quinn (Kay Lenz) comes forward to offer her lover Paris an alibi, despite threats from her rich and powerful husband. Matt Farley (Tom O'Brien), the victim's son, emerges as another possible suspect, since he inherited his father's evil empire, and there is no shortage of former convicts who harbour a grudge against Paris for putting them behind bars.

Originally intended as a sequel of sorts to Jagged Edge (1985), everyone associated with that project wisely bailed out, leaving Physical Evidence to wallow in its strictly derivative awfulness. The script, the directing and the performances are all just a tiny notch above TV movie tripe. There is simply nothing here that has not already been done repeatedly in other movies.

The story leaves gaping holes at every turn, with underdeveloped and unconvincing characters hissing at each other in forced conniptions, doing their best to act as idiotically as possible while trying to imitate better performances from much better movies. Joe Paris' most convenient memory loss opens the door for all sort of half-baked theories to be dragged from the oven moist with drooping ingredients trying to explain who did what to whom. It never matters, since Paris is an unsympathetic character and Jenny Hudson is more likable but much more annoying.

Theresa Russell delivers her lines in a catatonic monotone that suggests either a locked jaw or a mouthful of cotton, and her contrived pampered-girl-looking-to-do-good character hardly helps. For all her good intentions, Jenny Hudson simply reacts to the initiative of others and does absolutely nothing to help Joe Paris prove his innocence. A rather ridiculous hairdo does not help.

Burt Reynolds is marginally better, but he also walks through the movie with a been-there, done-that resignation, metronomically alternating anger, temper and frustration on a carousel of stock emotions.

It is left to Ned Beatty and Kay Lenz, ironically the two secondary characters who should have been the most predictable, to inject some much needed spice to the proceedings. Both bring welcome relish to their roles, with Lenz overcoming a wedged-in and unconvincing distraction about Deborah carrying on an illicit affair with Paris.

Author and wannabe director Michael Crichton would not direct another movie after this one. He may have had the ambition, but the evidence was against him.

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