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.
