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.