La cavale impossible

As noted by other IMDb users here, "Certain Fury" is essentially an updating of the Sidney Poitier / Tony Curtis movie "The Defiant Ones", though changing the sex of the central characters as well as adding gratuitous exploitation material. Nothing really wrong with that idea, at least if you are as big a fan of exploitation movies as I am, but the end results are only partially successful.

The movie gets off to a great start, being swift and packing in much exploitation and other good stuff. Though after the first thirty or so minutes, the movie becomes greatly uneven. There is some good stuff to follow, but they are bright moments lost in a suddenly slowing storyline. The movie almost gets boring at times because of this. Also, the ending is kind of weak, written and directed in a way that seems to come out of a much more serious movie than this.

Is the movie worth seeing? Well, if you are a patient fan of B movie exploitation, and you can see the movie cheaply or for free, then you'll probably get a reasonable amount of enjoyment out of it. If not, you'll probably be in the title state long before the movie reaches the ending.

Oscar-winners Tatum O'Neal and Irene Cara in an exploitation B-flick? Well, yes and no. "Certain Fury" was obviously made to appeal to the midnight-movie crowds, but there is strength in some of O'Neal's scenes with Cara (playing two girls on the lam after a courtroom shootout leaves blood and bodies everywhere). I liked it when Tatum suddenly turns maternal towards Irene and nurses her back to health (after rescuing her from a drug den). With Cara slung over one shoulder burbling about her mom, Tatum quietly says "I know, I know." This is a good scene; in fact, the picture has several good moments, but every bit with Cara's father (played by Moses Gunn on the verge of tears) is a bummer and Peter Fonda's cameo appearance is awful (you can't tell if he's slumming without effort or if he's just a lousy actor). There's an elaborately staged fight scene between O'Neal and her boy-toy which is unintentionally funny, and the dialogue is so perpetually profane it becomes a running joke.

It's like this:

Tatum as po' white trash. The Tuff Girrl. She smokes! She swears! She needs a new agent and quality time at a tanning salon!

Enter Irene "Fame" Cara. The Good Girrl. She's from Westchester! She wears GAP clothes! She once again shows us her negative-boobage in an unintentionally hysterical near-rape scene!

This turkey trots along like a how-to tutorial in camp & cliche, and the kitchen sink has been thrown in for good measure. We have a foot chase in the sewer-tunnels, a towering inferno in a crackwhore flophouse, the classic Peter Fonda boat scene, and a finale that had me spraying cherry Capri Sun from my nostrils. Hint: It's supposed to be sad but it's really a knee-slapper.

Not quite campy enough to be cult, "Certain Fury" can surely be found in a Blockbuster close-out bin... sandwiched somewhere between "Tuff Turf" and an Olsen Twin flick.

"Certain Fury" is grade-Z stuff in most departments (the low production values and the often very bad dialogue stand out), but Tatum O'Neal is engagingly tough and she makes the film worth watching all by herself. Irene Cara is awful, and the slashing scene is hilariously fake, but Tatum won me over, enough to give this film a ** rating.

You can just imagine how they tried to sell this one. Two Oscar winners Tatum O'Neal and Irene Cara team up together in this very trashy, b-grade urban action-thriller exploitation; a modernized mould of "THE DEFIANT ONES".

After a full-on, adrenaline-fueled first half-hour of courthouse slaughter, bullets spray the screen, panic erupts and bloody exchanges occur. Escaping that frenzy the girls end up in the city's sewers fighting the underground elements, running from the authorities who want their blood and getting on each other's nerves, as sparks fly between two prisoners that couldn't be any more different in all walks of life. On the run they go, trying to survive, being wrongly fingered as accomplices to what went down. One costly mishap after another puts both in dangerous predicaments on the dirty side of town.

I thought this was going to be great; formulaic, yeah, but what an excessive opening with strong stunt-work. Instead by the time it hit the halfway mark, it had already peaked. There it becomes uneven, the tension from then onwards (other than the crackhouse fight) had little impact as scenes go on longer than they should and eventually it meandered to the (lousy) finish line. Sometimes it wanted to have its cake and eat it too, dipping into both half-baked exploitation and serious drama. The latter does get manipulatively cheesy by trying to strike up an emotional chord; like the (unnecessary) scenes with one of the girl's father (Cara). Even the low-brow dialogues make it hard to take seriously. Although I did like the combination between O'Neal and Cara, even though the character details are predictably wear-worn, yet their interactions engage, from the callous remarks/or actions to their growing bond. Both stars weren't afraid to get down and dirty, but while not particularly likeable O'Neal did standout in her hardened, street smart hooker turn. Someone who didn't is a paycheck collecting Peter Fonda who appears in one of the most ridiculously unconvincing staged moments in the film involving a nail-filer.