The Hard Way

Violent film packs suspense , noisy action-packed , intrigue, thrills and lots of violence . They drove him to the edge, and on the edge there are no rules , all hell broke loose when they stopped .. . Regular crime thriller of the 80s that went on the ¨Vigilante genre¨ which Bronson had created as architect Paul Kersey turned avenger . A Los Angeles taxi driver named Jason (Robert Forster) , whom also works as a collector , crosses paths and later helps a distraught widow called Christine (Nacy Kwan) on the run from mobsters after a quartet of heinous hoodlums murder her family . The nasties stalk the couple who is submitted to a brutal hot pursuit and Jason protects her . Both of them get caught up in the crime underworld of the city . The taxi man takes the law into his own hands, searching vengeance on crooks, hoodlums and muggers . Jason seeks vendetta , shooting in cold blood , abusing on civil rights and killing mercilessly nasties. Finally, there happens a moving , edge-of-your-seat climax .

This exciting movie contains thrills , chills , suspense , noisy action-packed , gun-play and lots of violence and some gore , including obnoxious executions . It's certainly thrilling , though the morality may be questionable , even in this time, as the spectators were clearly on the Jason/Robert Forster side . This disgusting story looks increasingly passionless and mechanical and violence seems to be considered some moment excessive . Passable acting by Robert Forster as a yellow cab man as well as numbers runner for a local mobster , turned vigilante seeking to revenge and Nancy Kwan as a mature woman affected for the murder of her husband and son . Forster does what he can with this lousy screenplay and story . Acceptable support cast such as A Martinez as Tony , Jim Fitzpatrick as Body Guard , James McIntire as Jimmy and Joe Spinell as Brusstar . Crispy and screeching musical score by Jay Chattaway , usual composer of the 8os . The motion picture was middlingly directed by Norbert Meisel , husband's Nancy Kwan . This exciting but mediocre film belong to ¨Vigilante genre¨ whose main representations are ¨Charles Bronson's Death Wish¨ such as ¨Death wish II¨ ¨Death wish III¨ , ¨Death Wish 4 : The crackdown¨and ¨Death Wish: The face of death¨ and , of course , ¨Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry¨ movies , such as ¨The enforcers¨, ¨Sudden impact¨ , ¨The dead pool¨ . Furthermore , other notorious movies on the ¨Revenger¨ genre that achieved their splendor in the eighties are the followings : ¨Exterminator¨ I and II with Robert Ginty ; ¨Dark Angel¨ with Betty Russell ; ¨Steele Justice¨ with Martin Kove ¨; ¨The Punisher¨ with Dolph Lundgren , ¨Joe Don Baker's Walking tall¨ saga ; ¨Lorenzo Lamas's Snake eater¨ saga , ¨Arnold's Raw Deal¨ , ¨Stallone's Cobra¨ and many others .

Robert Forster is his ever-engaging self as Jason Walk, a ballplayer turned part time cabbie & part time numbers runner. He finds his life torn asunder when Christine Holloway (Nancy Kwan), a woman on a suicidal revenge mission, hires his cab. He lets her know in no uncertain terms that he's very unhappy about what she's gotten him into, and yet he is undeniably driven to protect her. The villain is a crime figure named Brusstar (Joe Spinell), who's murdered Christines' lowlife husband; their son also got killed in the crossfire.

"Walking the Edge" is no great shakes as revenge thrillers go, but it's certainly watchable. Forster really makes a lot of the difference, creating another average-Joe protagonist for whom you can easily root. Kwan is less satisfying, but she & Forster do have an interesting, antagonistic chemistry. (She actually has the nerve to accuse him of bungling her mission.). Spinell (who'd also acted with Forster in another revenge thriller, "Vigilante") is always good value; one of his main character traits is that he hates being addressed as "Bruce", and he frequently butts heads with McKee (Wayne Woodson), his number two guy who would like to be number one.

Also featuring other familiar faces such as A Martinez, Doug Toby, Luis Contreras, Ivy Bethune, Jacqueline Giroux, Aarika Wells, and Frankie Hill, this had a long road to the screen. It was filmed in 1982, but legal issues prevented it from being released until 1985.

Also notable for a typically strong Jay Chattaway score.

Six out of 10.

This is a small action-thriller of the vigilante subgenre, so popular in the 80s, with the great Robert Foster being forced to help a woman to find revenge against the gang that murder her family. The villain is performed by the always creepy Joe Spinell and the movie manages to keep things interesting, even with its extreme low budget and very thin script. The acting of these two and the grittiness of the film is by far the best of it.

My review was written in January 1985 after a Times Square screening.

Filmed in 1982 under the title "A Deadly Chase", "Walking the Edge" is an antiquated vengeance picture, harking back in most respects to the blaxploitation cycle of a decade earlier. Action prospects are modest for this indie acquisition released by Charles Band's Empire Pictures.

In a strong central performance (overcoming extreme deficiencies in Curt Allen's scriptingand Norbert Meisel's directing), Robert Forster toplines as an L. A. cabbie and numbers runner named Jason Wall, accidentally thrown in with femme-in-trouble Christine (Nancy Kwan), whom he adopts as a protector against gangsters led by the nasty Brusstar (typecast Joe Spinell). One of several irritating plot gaps has Christine suddenly resurfacing, after a violent teaser, opening which has Brusstar and cohorts kill her husband and son, to become a one-woman vengeance squad inolving cabbie Wall.

While harboring Christine at his house and continuing his daily numbers rounds, Wall gradually catches the revenge bug himself, particularly when his garage mechanic buddy Tony (A Martinez0 is brutally tortured and killed by Brusstar. Pic ends unsatisfyingly with star duo having successfully wiped out all the bad guys and facing a non-future.

Qualifying as a B-movie at least two decades after the Bs went out of fashion, "Edge" lacks the colorful casting and intriguing plot twists that made such pictures delightful.

Gore is substituted for exciting action setpieces and the vulgar dialog will need considerable laundering for tv use. Apart from Forster, who inserts sly touches to take the sting out of another sadistic anti-hero, acting honors go to Frankie Hill, stopping the show as a feisty prostitute who first castigaes Wall but later helps him out in a pinch.

An exiting and sometimes violent action-thriller with good actors and a good story. Kwan plays a housewife who is married to a gangster (without knowing it). When her family is brutally murdered by some other gangsters, and she manages to escape, she swears revenge to those who killed her son. She seeks cover with a taxi-driver (Forster) who ends up helping her with her bloody revenge.

Good action from the 1980's (7 out of 10)