Man, I don’t know what the fuck happened here, but this
turned out to be a brutal let down. It has all kinds of killer ingredients for
baking up a fulfilling tale of revenge set in urban New York. In fact, what
makes it most disappointing is that it was helmed by director John Flynn, a man
considered to be a luminary within the cinema of vengeance for his cult hit “Rolling
Thunder.” This guy of all people knows how to make a movie like this work! After all, we've seen it, and it's one of the ultimate revenge movies! Though "Defiance" begins with a glimmer
of promise, it never delivers that moment of excessive cruelty or violence that
usually drives films of this nature. In fact, the stakes are pretty low here.
You never really feel an unquenchable thirst for vengeance against the
antagonists, mainly because they never get the opportunity to make your skin
crawl. What actually might be the ultimate death of this movie is that it is so
accessible. It is virtually a PG take on the revenge formula.
Jan-Michael Vincent stars as Tommy, a sailor who’s been
forced into an extended leave due to a suspension they never bother to really
bother to go into. In fact, they never really pierce the character’s mystique.
Instead, we’re left to wonder what brought him to this point. Was he smuggling
drugs? Did he rape another crew member? You just really never know much about
the guy, which makes it difficult to get invested. He could have been a total dirtbag, which honestly would have given the story a little more weight had they gone in that direction. While this vague hardass waits out his
punishment, he decides to move into a shitty neighborhood where the inhabitants are more
or less forced to acclimate to his no-nonsense attitude. Eventually he meets a
girl. Then he crosses a gang. You're probably thinking, "hey, I can do the math real easy on this
one," but you'd be wrong. Though
putting Tommy’s girlfriend in peril would have been the most logical way to
kickstart this mess, the movie is too sensitive to “go there.” As alluded to before,
“Defiance”’s primary ailment is that the bad guys never do anything that’s
really that bad. Sure, there’s potential for bad things to occur, but the
menace stops at mere suggestion. In fact, between the points where they rob a
church bingo parlor and smash a roof top garden is when this thing careens into
a ditch – and a really clean one at that.
"Ooooh! Jan Michael Vincent worked hard on that garden, you
hooligans! He’s gonna get you!”
Even more unfortunate is that Rudy Ramos, who plays gang
leader Angel Cruz, is probably the best thing about the movie. Not only does he
look like a proto-“Parade” era Prince, but he’s an obvious heavy with built-in
sympathy, which is a total waste since you never see him do anything really
fucked up. There’s little point in going out of your way to humanize the
villain if you’re not going to make the audience feel conflicted about
connecting with them.
The majority of the movie feels like total filler, with the
gang being jerks and the neighborhood beckoning Tommy to join their ranks and
fight back. Tommy eventually decides to join their effort after a fairly minor
character is murdered off screen by the villains. You get the feeling that the
writers were into the idea of that feel-good moment at the end where evil is
usurped, but they didn’t want to commit to depicting the sort of rousing nastiness
that’s so germane to the payoff they wanted. They knew where they wanted to get
to, but they took a really shitty, in-direct, and overly-long way to get there.
The second best thing about this movie is probably Danny
Aiello, who plays Carmine. Now older and pot-bellied, Carmine spends most of
his time with his cronies at a local watering hole reminiscing about how they
used to run the streets. What’s interesting is that these old-school gang
bangers really resent the new youth gangs even though they probably weren’t
dissimilar to them. Conceptually, the idea of an overweight Aiello stretching
out his “Lords of Flatbush” jacket coming out of retirement to teach these new
punks a lesson is pure gold. This arc should have been the film’s main focus. Instead,
too much time is spent on some limp-dick romance that doesn’t really drive the
story anywhere.
There are fine points that could have been expanded upon,
making this even more of a bummer. Some say this is a film with heart, but that’s
only a misnomer for softness. The tender moments are meaningless due to the
astonishing lack of grit, as they are too constant and with little contrast.
Glimmers of happiness and soul in the ghetto have more meaning when the dire
reality of the environment is given more punch. Instead, this feels like an
attempted inner-city “Waltons” with some melodramatic moments that veer into
unintentional chuckles. Overall, this was a waste of time for a lot of great
actors, including Art Carney, who is basically relegated to playing “old Jewish
guy who gets beat up.” This is easily the palest revenge flick of all time.
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