Vigilante

By Zentilack

Summary

Eddie Marino (Robert Forster) is a family man who lives and works in the big city.  His friends, including Nick (Fred Williamson), are fed up with the criminals taking over their streets and begin to fight back.  Eddie is not supportive of their extra-legal efforts, but when his family is attacked and the perps walk free, Eddie decides that becoming a vigilante is the only way to see justice done.


What I Expected

I had never heard of this until I saw it suggested to me on Instant Netflix.  Frankly, I thought it was a Death Wish clone.  Now, I like Death Wish, so I figured that Vigilante had a real decent shot at being an entertaining movie.  If anything, I expected it to be the same sort of straightforward story with more over-the-top violence.

The Bad

The title is wrong.  There are no less than four vigilantes in this film (there might be more, but I only remember the faces of the four).  Minor flaw I guess, but I went into this film expecting the focus to be squarely on one vigilante because of the title.  Should have been "Vigilantes," plural.

Eddie and Nick

That brings me to the biggest problem I had with this movie.  It's supposed to be focused on Eddie and how he becomes a vigilante to get revenge on those who harmed his family.  What you actually find is a smashed together pair of stories.  One is Eddie's story, and the other is that of Nick and his buddies, and they aren't really mixed together very well.  The second act has a huge focus on the character of Nick and his own fight against crime.  Fred Williamson, a big name in the Blacksploitation genre (Hammer, Boss Nigger), steals the show, especially in the middle of the film.  By the time focus has returned to Eddie, I was irritated because I wanted to see more of Nick! 

The action is sort of lopsided.  The movie had significantly violent acts in the first half, but the viewer never sees any of it until around halfway through the movie.  The camera cuts away or there's something blocking the shot; you know something bad has happened, but you can't see it.  In the second half the visuals are much more graphic and intense, but half the time you don't know why anything is happening.  For instance, one of the gang members gets killed by the vigilantes, and the rest of the gang (I assume) wants revenge.  So what do they do?  Try and kill of one of the vigilantes?  No.  They ambush two cops and brutally gun them down.  I was literally asking the movie, out loud, what they were doing.  The cops didn't do anything, why are you showing this as if it's a major plot point?!

The music is, for the most part, terrible.  I'm not even sure how to describe it.  One time, the movie actually fooled me with a briefly pleasant guitar tune before it blew up into a grating mess.  I suppose it's meant to be unpleasant, to fit the tone of the movie, but geez...turn the volume down a little.

The ending scene was just a little weird to me, almost out of left field.  I don't think I'm going to spoil anything here (I'm leaving out the name of the character who dies), but if you want you can jump down to the next section.  Our hero has killed all the gang members he was looking for, but then the final scene shows a guy walking out that, admittedly, the hero has a beef with, but who hasn't killed or robbed anyone.  Guy gets into his vehicle and Eddie blows it up with a remote car bomb!  Slippery slope of being a vigilante, or unnecessarily dark ending?  I vote for the latter.

The Good

Not enough Fred Williamson

Fred Williamson was awesome in this movie.  Frankly, I wish they had disposed of the character of Eddie and just made the movie about Nick and his band of vigilantes.  Robert Forster isn't bad as Eddie, it's just that he can't compete with Williamson here.  Nick is more interesting, more likeable, and is seen fighting for a cause other than simple hate and vengeance.  Williamson is the reason I got any enjoyment out of this movie.  His monologue in the opening is particularly great.

The film does a good job of making you feel like you're in a dirty, gritty, crime-ridden big city.  While I wouldn't call the cinematography great, it's pretty good (if not very well edited at times) and occasionally gets some really good shots.  The real drawback here is the chase scenes which are, unfortunately, a bit lackluster. 

Yeah, that's about it.

Overall Thoughts

Vigilante was just what I expected, and yet it wasn't.  You can see the basic Death Wish plot in here, but it's like they added in a whole other movie, cutting both of them down to make them fit.  The Eddie plot might have made for a mediocre (at best) film, but the Nick plot could have been a really fun ride as its own movie.

As it is, Vigilante is several neat ideas and interesting scenes that weren't put together very well.  Generally speaking, I do not recommend this.  If you aren't a fan of vengeance films (a la Death Wish), then definitely skip this.  If you're a fan of the genre, though, give it a shot.  You may very well like it more than I did. 

Vigilante is on Instant Netflix.  You can also find the Blu-Ray or DVD on Amazon for about $13.