Vigilante (1983)
AKA Street Gang, Street Fighters
Starring Robert Forster, Fred Williamson, Richard Bright, Rutanya Alda, Don Blakely, Joseph Carberry, Willie Colón, Joe Spinell, Carol Lynley, Woody Strode
Directed by William Lustig
Expectations: Moderate. I was hoping that I’d enjoy this as much as Walking the Edge.
Vigilante opens with Fred Williamson walking out of complete darkness. He has a cigar in his mouth and ominous, droning electronic music builds in the background. Then he speaks…
“Hey. I don’t know about you guys, but me, I’ve had it up to here. There are some 40-odd homicides a day on our streets. There are over two million illegal guns in this city. Man, that’s enough guns to invade a whole damn country with. They shoot a cop in our city without even thinking twice about it. Ah, come on. I mean, you guys ride the subway. How much more of this grief we gonna stand for, huh? How many more locks we gotta put on our goddamn doors? Now we ain’t got the police, the prosecutors, the courts or the prisons. I mean, it’s over. The books don’t balance. We are a statistic. Now I’m telling you… when you can’t go to the corner and buy a pack of cigarettes after dark because you know the punks and the scum own the street when the sun goes down and our own government can’t protect its own people then I say this pal, you got a moral obligation. The right of self-preservation. Now you can run, you can hide, or you can start to live like human beings again. This is our Waterloo, baby! If you want your city back… you gotta take it. Dig it? Take it!”
Needless to say, when Forster finds out this has happened, he flips and wants revenge. Forster is aware of Williamson’s vigilante activities, but he is reluctant to head down that path initially. He first tries the court system, but as foreshadowed in Williamson’s opening monologue, it gets him nothing but absolute frustration. Forster is more subdued and understated in this role, which serves the story and the character but makes him a bit uninteresting. His character has a great arc over the course of the film though, so ultimately it was the correct choice. Williamson is fantastic as the fed-up vigilante squad leader, who gets to showcase not only his athletic prowess but also his underrated acting chops. The acting from all is fairly good, definitely better than I expected. Salsa music legend, Willie Colon, plays the gang leader and does a great job. This was his first film role, but you’d never know it.
The film’s score is electronic-based and very 1980s. It was composed by Jay Chattaway, the same guy who did the score for Walking the Edge. While that score was light and rather up-beat, the Vigilante score is dark, brooding and dangerous. It perfectly captures the seedy, gritty nature of this film and is a real highlight. When Forster finally decides to seek Williamson’s help, the music during Forster’s walk over to him is reminiscent of some of the great spaghetti western scores, a proud march of honor into certain death. Great stuff.
I think I enjoyed this a hair less than Walking the Edge, but they’re really two completely different films so it is unfair of me to compare them directly. This is a satisfying ’80s revenge drama and you should totally check it out if you are a fan of such things.