The Hard Way

Fairly awful revenge flick casts Robert Forster as a former ball player-turned-cab driver, operating a vintage yellow-checker taxi in Los Angeles, who is hired by a smartly-dressed Asian woman packing heat. She's on a personal mission after seeing her husband and teenage son murdered by a low-life drug dealer and his goons. Seems the husband was dealing to kids behind her back and holding out on his 'friends'; now she's out to settle the score, and the cabbie finds himself sympathetic to her cause. Curt Allen's florid, overwritten dialogue doesn't appear to trip up the players (Forster, Nancy Kwan, A Martinez, or cult character actor Joe Spinell), though after awhile it becomes clear Allen doesn't have any other talent beyond inventively stringing together f-bombs and n-words. The violence is standard for '80s B-grade trash, while the loving relationship between Forster and Kwan blossoms out of nowhere. *1/2 from ****

After witnessing the murder of her husband and son at the hands of drug dealers, "Christine Holloway" (Nancy Kwan) is emotionally traumatized to the point that she is temporarily committed to a sanitarium to assist in her recovery. That being said, when she is eventually released she becomes obsessed with the idea of obtaining her revenge upon those who killed her family. Meanwhile, a taxi driver by the name of "Jason Walk" (Robert Forster) is also having his own personal problems which are only exacerbated with his other job as a collector for a local numbers racket. Unfortunately for him, things quickly go from bad to worse one day when he reluctantly picks up a woman in his taxi who asks to be taken to a couple of locations. Little does he realize that this same woman is about to shoot and kill two different men and that he is soon to be considered as an accessory to these murders. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this could have been a good crime-drama under the right circumstances but the apparent low budget and uneven acting greatly hampered that effort. Even so, I don't consider this to be a bad film by any means and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Around this time vigilante/revenge films were the in-thing to cash-in on the movie market, but some kinda slipped passed the radar like "Rolling Thunder" and especially Nobert Meisel's solid, but tough little item "Walking the Edge". So before Robert Forster and Joe Spinell teamed up in William Lustig's "Vigilante", they together starred in this urban crime/revenge flick that is very well done for what was made on a minor budget and quick time frame. Holding a raw, taut edge the story was a little more thoughtful in the way it came across, unlike many rash and downright average exploitative revenge films that flooded the times. It's more talkative than expected. However it still had a punishing intensity, and moments of gutsy violence and suitably sardonic humour. Lending to the deep-rooted feel is Jay Chattaway's funky, upbeat blues score. Although what really makes the movie has got to be Forster's strong, detailed central performance, and likewise Spinell's excellently scummy head thug. Nancy Kwan has a potent presence too. The support cast; A Martinez, Wayne Woodson and James McIntire are reasonably fine.

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)

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.