Fighting Back

Fighting Back (1982)

Runtime: 98 minutes

Directed by: Lewis Teague

Starring: Tom Skerritt, Patti Lupone, Michael Sarrazin, Yaphet Kotto, David Rasche

From: Dino de Laurentiis Company

Unfortunately, this review will start off with death. Aside from Leslie Nielsen passing away yesterday, there’s also The Empire Strikes Back director Irwin Kirschner passing away today; now, besides Empire, the only movies I’ve seen from him are the James Bond movie that actually isn’t a part of the series called Never Say Never Again and the other is Robocop 2. Neither movie I think too highly of, to say the least, but I’m sure his other films are better than that and Empire will never not be awesome. So, RIP to him.

Also passing away recently was producer Dino de Laurentiis, who produced a variety of films from the 70’s up to recent times. His name became infamous as it got connected to such schlock as the first King Kong remake in the 70’s, a killer whale movie called Orca, the Flash Gordon remake, and some others. Yet, he also produced serious things, like Serpico, Death Wish, and Conan the Barbarian. So, his name shouldn’t be looked down upon if it’s attached to a movie.

This film, Fighting Back, is from him and released by Paramount. Now, Dino didn’t produce any of the Death Wish sequels, so it’s not a surprise that the same year the first sequel came out, he’d go back to the well himself and do something similar. This has never been released on even DVD, but it was on Netflix Instant. I don’t have that service but I was still able to track it down and watch the film.

The movie is about a typical Italian family, headed by patriarch John D’Angelo (Skerritt) who runs a deli in Philadelphia and sad to say for them, their neighborhood has turned to crap, with crime and other bad things ruling the day. He decides to live up to the title of the movie after having a ridiculously bad set of circumstances happen to him one after another. He and his wife were driving around one day when they interfered with a pimp slapping his ho! I kid you not. That lead to a car chase and an accident results in a miscarriage. Then, his mother walks in on a robbery and the robbers try to pry a ring off of her finger; it was stuck, so the entire finger gets cut off with shears! This all happens in the span of a day or two at the most. Reminds me of the Daniel Powter song Bad Day.

So, after all that John gets mad and he forms a neighborhood watch group that patrols the area and calls the cops in case they find something illegal happening. What ends up happening is that John and his group act more like vigilantes (especially when John sees the guy who ran him off the road), which gets the ire of the likes of local politicians, the police, and even a local African-American activist (Kotto), as the watch gets noticed as being a racist thing. Yep, the movie is button-pushing to the max. It's manipulative.

Yet, it's still very entertaining. It's a drama and there's drama things that go on. For example, a classmate of their son (who looks like around 12) is a user of heroin! But, there's also action that you see throughout, from barfights to a brawl in a chicken shack, and arms getting broken with baseball bats. It's audience-pleasing. So, it's not technically great, the story throws a lot out there in a "let's see what sticks on the wall" sort of thing, some things should not be looked at too closely... that said, it's still fun and if you enjoy movies like the first Death Wish or other stories concerning vigilantes getting revenge on their own when the law can't help them out, then it is a movie worth tracking down. I have no idea if it's still on Netflix Instant or not, but I'm sure that "less ethical" sites also have it available for download.

I'll be back tomorrow night.