After thugs brutalize his wife and son and a corrupt criminal justice system puts the perpetrators back on the street, a New York City factory worker turns vigilante to find some measure of bloody justice.
When Michael Winner’s “Death Wish” was released in 1974, it caused a furor and divided society, causing debates over how to handle the ever-increasing crime rate. If a gang member was arrested for committing a heinous crime, and then released back into society because of a lack of evidence, or eyewitnesses unwilling to go on the stand and implicate the accused from fear of retaliation against them and their families, then what should be done? If the police and the courts, which were created to take care of criminals, fail to do their jobs, is it okay for people to turn vigilante and administer their own form of justice? Both “Death Wish” and “Vigilante” dare to answer those questions by way of the father of the family taking matters into his own hands after the courts fail to take responsibility and prove to be corrupt.
In “Vigilante,” Robert Forster plays Eddie Marino, a factory worker who decides to take the law into his own hands after a gang attacks his wife in their own home and kills their young son. When the judge in the case gives one of the gang members a two-year suspended sentence for his son’s death but sends Eddie to jail for a few days because he emotionally reacted to the judge’s outrageous ruling, he decides to track down the gang himself. Along with the help of his friend, Nick (Fred Williamson), and two other accomplices, men who have already tracked down and delivered their own form of punishment against criminals who escaped the long hand of the law, one by one, Eddie kills each member of the gang until he is left face-to-face with their leader Prago (Don Blakely), a smug, sadistic man who freely admits to having killed Eddie’s son and shows no remorse whatsoever.
Director William Lustig obviously doesn’t understand the meaning of the word subtle because everything in “Vigilante” is spelled out in big, bold, sweeping brushes. The bad guys aren’t just bad guys, they are remorseless, barbarous men who enjoy inflicting pain on helpless citizens and take extra satisfaction, with smiles plastered across their faces, as they shoot innocent children in the back of the head with a double-barrel shotgun. This is presented to us so that when Eddie finally exacts his revenge, we feel absolutely no pity or compassion towards the gang members and when Eddie finally confronts the gang’s leader, Prago, he does so on a very high tower, to which he tells Eddie that he killed his son, enjoyed doing it, doesn’t regret it one little bit, and then dares Eddie to kill him too. Which he does, be throwing him over the side.
“Vigilante” makes no apologies for the type of film it is and the kind of violence it portrays. It tries to open a conversation by putting the viewer in the protagonist’s place and asks, “What would you do?” If the police and the courts didn’t do their jobs, and these gang members were set free, would you try to track them down yourself and “take care of them?” I know what my answer would be, especially concerning my family but then we’re told we would be just as bad as the perpetrators themselves, forsaking the law and taking care of business ourselves. Then again, I guess if the legal system was perfect and put away all the bad guys, we would never find ourselves in this predicament. But it is not perfect, and bad people are set free all the time while good people are locked up.
The acting, overall, is mediocre at best. Robert Forster, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown,” spends the entire movie looking miserable and pissed off, and not for the right reasons. He scowls, frowns, and grimaces the whole way through, and even Fred Williamson, so good at playing tough-guy roles throughout his career, is laughable in a role as a vigilante who suddenly jumps out in front of his adversary in a ludicrous martial arts stance, with the intent of scaring his nemesis into submission. In reality, they would have died from unintentional laughter. Only Rutanya Alda, as Eddie’s wife Vickie, shows any signs of life and emotion but sadly, she is underused, as most women were in these types of movies from the ’70s and ’80s.
Blue Underground has done an exceptional job presenting “Vigilante” in a pristine new restoration, scanned in 4K 16-bit from the original 35mm camera negative, with Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos audio, fully loaded with exclusive new and archival Extras. Their previous titles, “Daughters of Darkness,” “The House by the Cemetery,” “The New York Ripper,” and “Zombie,” were all presented in 4K as exquisitely as “Vigilante” and while you may or may not like some of these titles, there is no denying that their 4K restoration is near-perfect. If you haven’t seen the original “Death Wish,” starring Charles Bronson, or “Vigilante,” check it out, you might enjoy it but the one thing it will most certainly do, is invite a conversation about the subject matter.
Now available on an Exclusive Limited Collector’s Edition 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Blu-ray
