Night of the Juggler

Night of the Juggler (Robert Butler 1980) is an interesting watch. It's not only a tense thriller with good performances, but it's also one of those movies that give a great impression of New York City before the Disneyfication. Not only that: the deterioration of the city is a major theme in the movie.

You see, Gus (Cliff Gorman) is a psychopath who blames City Hall for the squalor he lives in, and the real estate magnates for the destruction of the old neighborhoods. He lives in a derelict building in The Bronx, which was once owned by his family. Now it's a pile of rubble. 'This used to be real nice up here', he says while he walks past mountains of rubble with his young kidnap victim. He's not thinking of moving. 'I'll always live here. No matter how many *racial slur* they send in to burn the place down'.

Gus has come up with a plan: kidnap the daughter of a real estate magnate, take his money and teach him a lesson. But there's a mix-up and he ends up kidnapping the kid of an ex-cop (James Brolin), who starts a frantic manhunt through NYC's underbelly to track down the kidnapper and get his daughter back. Highlights include a brawl in a peep show, a confrontation with some genuine 'Bronx warriors' and Brolin's constant fights with his former colleagues.

It's a good movie. Not a classic by any means, but I liked the fact that the depressing state of the city was not merely a visual backdrop, but also a theme in the picture. For this reason, Night of the Juggler could make for an excellent double bill with the fascinating Wolfen (Michael Wadleigh), which was made the same year and has a similar theme running though its horror story.

Truly this film should be called Night of the Jogger. It would make much more sense than Night of the Juggler, which has to be one of the most uninteresting titles ever assigned to a movie. Not only are there tons of joggers everywhere, but all the characters jog everywhere they go. Every time they need to go somewhere, they jog. There is no real reason for this.

Brolin and his daughter start out for her school, jogging of course. But then she decides she can jog there by herself, and Brolin turns around for the jog home. About twenty seconds later, Brolin's daughter is kidnapped from the park when she is mistaken for a rich businessman's daughter.

Here we come to one of the most implausible parts of the movie. The kidnapper throws her in the car, and she just sits there, calmly. She never tries to get out of the car. At several times they are stuck in traffic jams. Her window is down, her door is unlocked, for gods sake the car can't move, and yet she does not even try to get out of the car.

We head into a long chase scene with Brolin getting a cab to chase the kidnapper. After the kidnapper crashes his car, he grabs the daughter by the hand and they run into the subway and catch a ride. Yes, that's right, the kidnapped daughter willingly runs with the kidnapper. They are on a crowded street and yet she never plants her feet and refuses to move, or even screams for help. She just runs along with him.

When they get off the subway, the kidnapper steals a phone company van. He helps the daughter up into the front seat, has her slide over to the passenger side....and she sits there. She doesn't even attempt to go open the door or get out. This girl should be charged as an accessory in her kidnapping!

The other really annoying part of the movie is that as Brolin tries to find his daughter, he is arrested or stopped by the police. But instead of saying "my daughters been kidnapped." He keeps saying they have to let him go, and either being really vague or trying to explain the whole story. Same thing happens when he tries to find what the kidnapper dropped outside a live girls porno place. He goes into the little viewing booths, and does he say his daughter has been kidnapped and that he needs help. Of course not, the big dope says "I'm looking for a girl..." Oh yeah, that's really going to help in a peep show setting. Sigh....

The movie is fairly frustrating as the characters sabotage themselves over and over again. It is only through this contrived sabotage that the kidnapper gets the daughter and Brolin doesn't get her back right away. And the kidnapper is really wacko, but not in a scary way. We find out his motives when he explains the entire reason to the daughter as they are walking to his house - yeah, that's right, the daughter is still walking along with the kidnapper. Hell, he isn't even holding her hand now. So if you can stand the frustration or if you are with friends and want to laugh at the sheer contrivances that keep this movie going, be my guest and watch this movie - and remember the movie is about joggers, not jugglers.

A great yet undeservedly obscure entry in the New York as Urban Wasteland cinema genre of the 70's and 80's. Put this one in there along with "Fort Apache: The Bronx," "Taxi Driver," the "Death Wish" series, "Escape From New York," Roberta Findlay's "Tenement," and "The Warriors." Recognizing that from the perspective of 2010, our collective image of New York City is no longer like this, after over two decades of sprucing the place up, you young'uns who don't have any memory of that period can get a good snapshot of the rampant fear and paranoia of those days in this film. It gives that same added emotional frisson you would get watching a fictional World War II movie that was made during the War itself, realizing how seriously both the filmmakers and the audiences at that time would have looked upon this fictional presentation as a representation of reality, knowing that lives were still on the line and the whole crappy situation was very much in full effect.

The film's intentions are made clear as within five minutes into the movie, we get terrorism, a woman trying to kill maurading rats with a broom handle, and a hot dog vendor telling the hero, Jim Brolin, "Did you know that 10,000 people left New York last month?" The Psycho of the Hour, the "Juggler" of the title, a racist and a scumbag, kidnaps a little girl and holds her for ransom. Her father is a rich real-estate developer, who Psycho Pants blames for destroying his South Bronx neighborhood by "letting the N*****s and the S****s move in" and destroy all the buildings. Or, so he thinks.

But dummy has kidnapped the wrong girl: she's really the daughter of James Brolin, an ex-cop with an anger management problem and a total lack of fear. Now in order to track down the Psycho, Brolin is unleashed on an apocalyptic Manhattan landscape, where he careens around like a pinball in a pinball machine (contemporary reference there), crashing trucks, stealing police cars, getting in fights with peep show booth bouncers and Puerto Rican gang members, and beating the tar out of all of them. Brolin also gets hold of a psycho cop on his tail, played with eye-bulging glee by Dan "Noon O Clock Shadow" Hedaya, and pushes Hedaya into a pen of vicious, snarling attack dogs, who then proceed to bite him a new one! Yowch!

Meanwhile, character actor great Richard S. Castellano is the lead cop on the case(s), who doesn't have contact with Brolin's character, but is sort of watching him from afar. It's all building up to the final conflict between Brolin and the psychotic kidnapper in an underground bunker full of steam pipes. Yeah, just like every other movie ever made (Terminator 2, Commando, Robocop...I could go on, but I won't).

This is REALLY sleazy and action-packed for a major studio release and I loved it! Plus you get to see some great footage of Manhattan in its grimy prime and the devastated South Bronx landscape.

Sure, the plot is over-the-top and ridiculous; Brolin attacks almost everyone he comes into contact with, including his ex-wife, and he's supposed to be the Good Guy; his daughter is not the most appealing character; and the Police are all portrayed as barely competent idiots. I didn't care. I still enjoyed this movie immensely.

That title does bite the big one, though.

UPDATE: It is my understanding that the rights holder for this movie, who is a small production company, not a major studio, is not interested in releasing this on DVD of Blu-Ray anytime soon. So your only chance at seeing this is digging up an old VHS release and hitting up Goodwill for a working VHS machine.

My word what a ride! Bizarre and spiteful, but dynamically boundless. Now that they don't make urban action thrillers like this any more. They just wouldn't dare. But boy do I miss them. "Night of the Juggler" is a jaunty, outrageous and politically incorrect very late 70s chase thriller filled with a lot running, chaotic driving (stealing police cars), chewy dialogues and ballsy beat-ups. It's a relentlessly raw and intense barrage, as our protagonist violently bounces from here to there encountering cops, corrupt cops, an ex-wife, pimps, prostitutes, bouncers and street gangs along the authentically seedy strips of New York in his quest to find his kidnapped daughter. In what was a bungled napping attempt of mistaken identity… although the kidnapper still believes he has the right girl; that of a wealthy real-estate owner. Now just wait until James Brolin's ruggedly scruffy ex-cop character gets his hands on the madcap kidnapper. There'll be hell to pay! Everyone he comes across that stands in his way have felt it. The pulpy plot might be "heavily" contrived, unpleasant and fairly ridiculous, as it goes beyond and pushes reality many times. However this one-man riot machine provides on-going gritty, seedy and unapologetic excitement. No one is safe from this one man's devotion. "I've got to find my little girl." A chiselled Brolin is fitting in the central role, looking and acting the part. Cliff Gorman is particularly edgy as the scummy kidnapper. Then you have Richard S. Castellano bringing some solidity and Dan Hedaya is memorable as a psychotic cop. Director Robert Butler provides great location staging for its action and keeps a frenetic pace keeping things rough and ready. It might not be high-art, but this grungy, slam-bang action fodder is smashing entertainment.

It's quite funny, really… I live in Brussels; the city recently referred to as a "hellhole" by the newly elected (at the time I'm writing this) US President Donald Trump. Judging by this grim & gritty early eighties movie, however, the only genuine hellhole in the world is New York … and that's where Trump lives!

No, seriously, apart from being a fast-paced and darkly entertaining action/thriller, "Night of the Juggler" is primarily an anti-tourist campaign for the city of New York! Nothing you see here will ever make you want to go city-tripping in the Big Apple! We're talking pauperized ghettos, Puerto Rican gang-wars, filthy rancid sex clubs and maniacal, shotgun-wielding and corrupt policemen. Add to this a cast full of unlikable characters, brutal violence, raw editing & camera-work, perverted undertones and genuine adult actresses, and you seemingly have the perfect recipe of a typical '70s exploitation cocktail. But the odd thing is that "Night of the Juggler" isn't just some sleazy and Z-grade drive-in flick, but an actually well- budgeted production from the distinguished Columbia Pictures studios!

The teen daughter of ex-cop turned truck driver Sean Boyd gets kidnapped in broad daylight and in the middle of a crowded Central Park, but nobody reacts or even seems to care. Yes, THAT is the New York City as illustrated in "Night of the Juggler". The kidnapper is a racist pervert named Gus Soltic, but he mistook Boyd's daughter for the daughter of a wealthy real estate contractor that he wants to extort and blame for the downfall of his childhood neighborhood. Whilst Soltic never properly realizes that he took the wrong girl, her father literally races – on foot and by car – through the city. He searches for clues and witnesses, but he also flees for the police because many of his former colleagues hate his guts.

"Night of the Juggler" is a film full of flaws, imbecilities and shortcomings. For example, and like several other reviewers already righteously pointed out, the relationship between the teenage girl and her kidnapper is bizarre and implausible. She doesn't fight back or scream hysterically! She doesn't grab one of the numerous opportunities to escape or call for help! In fact, she doesn't resist at all. Her father doesn't make his own life any easier, neither, since he never properly makes the effort of explaining to the police or potential witnesses what has happened to his daughter. The dialogues are often underdeveloped and the film is overall too long. Particularly the whole climax is too tedious and fairly useless, because it takes place in the sewers and half of the footage is too dark to follow. And yet, I really liked the hefty atmosphere as well as many other things; like the wild taxi ride at the beginning and the gloriously insane character played by Dan Hedaya. He plays a cop who used to be very corrupt and got degraded due to Boyd's testimony, when he sees Boyd popping up in his precinct again he literally goes bonkers! Lead actors James Brolin, Cliff Gorman and Richard Castellano give away more than adequate performances, but they honestly can't match the psychopathic facial expressions linked to Hedaya's acting! Steady direction also, by Robert Butler, who's mainly known for his Disney live-action classics "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes" and "The Barefoot Executive". Rather than Disney guff, "Night of the Juggler" more fits into the category with other vile NYC thrillers like "Maniac", "Ms. 45" and "The Exterminator".