Cast:
Michael Beck (Swan), James Remar (Ajax), Deborah Van Valkenburgh (Mercy), Marcelino Sánchez (Rembrandt), David Harris (Cochise), Tom McKitterick (Cowboy), Brian Tyler (Snow), Dorsey Wright (Cleon), Terry Michos (Vermin), David Patrick Kelly (Luther), Roger Hill (Cyrus), Edward Sewer (Masai), Lynne Thigpen (the D.J.), and Thomas G. Waites (Fox) Directed by Walter Hill (#1072 - 48 Hrs, #1091 - Last Man Standing, #1139 - Supernova, #1625 - The Long Riders, #1728 - Another 48 Hrs)
Review:
“Our film doesn’t say everyone is supposed to be a lawyer or a doctor or something. The movie sees gangs as a defensive alignment in order to help you survive in a harsh atmosphere.”
In 1965, Sol Yurick made a crime novel that took inspiration from Xenophon’s Anabasis involving gangs and a desperate run back to Coney Island through rival turf. He had been a social investigator within New York City's welfare department for several years prior to becoming a fulltime writer. Lawrence Gordon (once a vice president within American International Pictures before starting to produce films with Dillinger in 1973) was the one to spearhead a production as a producer, even if it would be a semi-cheap film made for Paramount Pictures with a director in Walter Hill that had two films to his name with Hard Times (1975) and The Driver (1978); at the time, only Hard Times was remotely successful. Hill delivered re-writes to the original script as done by David Shaber (the actual Yurick novel was, well, a straight-to-the point book about a gang in all of the rough-and-tumble moves). The wild road of making a film on location in New York City led to a good deal of success and turmoil in filmmaking (Waites, apparently seen as a "potential next James Dean", got into arguments with Hill about the nature of the dialogue and filmmaking that saw him get suddenly get killed off, to which he demanded to not be credited for the role). The film was rushed a bit to beat the rush of a film that came out in the same year in The Wanderers, which was a Bronx coming-of-age story involving teenagers in gangs; both movies were pretty moderate hits, but only one attracted a bit of violence within screenings (which because pundits really are as dumb as you think, they linked to the film just because someone died) that saw a brief halting of advertising by Paramount. The introduction of Hill's director's cut makes reference to the Battle of Cunaxa (in tying the run of a group of people back home) to go with other additions (comic book panels) that apparently were things that Hill could not do due to the rushed time to make the film. Your milage may vary on whether the panels add anything substantial to the film.
There is something about filming on location that really brings out the ingenuity in a director, particularly one as interesting as Walter Hill in lean and mean adventure that really could double as a Western (Hill was once quoted as saying that every one of his films was a Western, although it wasn't until one would be amused to compare this to Hill's fourth feature with 1980's The Long Riders). It is a certain kind of capsule movie that has a look one can't just replicate when it comes to grime that works so well here for a relatively breezy 92-minute runtime that goes right in for a useful kinetic journey that just has the feeling of...being in a rush. It has the coordinated energy in its arrangement of fight sequences to go with a handful of amusing moments involving appealing people (punks probably had a field day). Beck (picked after Hill watched him star in a film called "Madman") and Van Valkenburgh have that type of wavering chemistry that could only come from people that believe they can navigate the stormy waters. Sure, you can't really define these characters more than a sentence or two, but that can go for anyone here and yet they still make it worth the trip. Remar (in just his second film role) has a chaotic energy to him that commands the screen in stupefying fervor worth appreciating. Of course, Kelly (making his film debut) does well in that worthwhile type of sadistic derangement that naturally has the most enduring bit of the whole film involving "come out to play" (emphasis on that last word, dragged out). It is a movie one catches for the exhilaration and madness, all of which gets going with that buildup in the starting sequence involving a collection of gangs and a man named Cyrus (if one looks up Anabasis, that involved a large group of Greek mercenaries hired...by someone named Cyrus the Younger, which, well, ended with Cyrus dying). It isn't a film about the social problem but instead a frenzy of coordinated chaos that is broadly crude but totally the kind of movie to slip on one night and enjoy for its clear-eyed dystopian nature that just busts loose.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
