The Michigan Daily Friday, May 28, 1982 Page 7
Vigilante violence in Hollywood

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By Chris Case
IMAGINE:
Your neighborhood goes to hell. The
crime rate soars like crazy. Punks and
criminals dance around fires in gar-
bage cans to disco music. Your twelve
year old son's best friend is on smack.
Your Mom gets her finer cut off in a
hold-up. Thugs run you off the road and
cause your wife tp have a miscarriage.
She wants to move. You're upset. What
do you do?
First you look around, assess the
situation.Then it hits you. You're in
Hollywood.
And that's the problem with Fighting
Back, a film that sacrifices reality for
sensationalism and real characters for
trivial ideas. The film is about the
moral duplicity of vigilantism. It fuzzes
the line between right and wrong and
tries to make a valid point, but the point
is so obvious and the elaborations on it
so tedious that you leave feeling stupid
and depressed.
. John D'Angelo (Tom Skerritt) is the
hero, the organizer of the vigilanti
patrol. He's a vicious and essentially
stupid man but he's make to seem
h likeable against a backdrop of
criminals ever more stupid and vicious
than himself.
John is inimical and brutal and he

beats on people until he's exhausted
and bleary-eyed. He's foul-mouthed
(the word "fuck" and variations on it
constitute a considerable portion of the
dialogue). He loves his family, very
much.
He's also Italian, living in an Italian
neighborhood, which adds interest.
Italian culture in this film consists of
spaghetti dinners and provolone
cheese.
What's chiefly disappointing about
Fighting is the way it portrays
criminals. It's hard to say just what's
driving them; they seem to act solely
out of a need to be insanely violent,
which makes for an insanely violent
movie.
For example: one man is discovered
setting fire to a building. He's chased,
runs around outside for a while, then
ATTENTION ROCKERS!
Will be appearing at the
SECOND CH'ANCE
Sunday, May 30th
Show Starts a 9:30

runs back into the already burning.funny. During vigilante training, one of
building to continue setting the fire and the volunteers starts making out with
finish fighting the vigilantes. the respiration dummy and saying
Would you do this if you were an ar- sweet things to it. The dummy lies there
sonist? Are criminals merely nuts? stupidly. Later, he karate chops at it
Fighting Back would lead you to believe and it bounces stupidly. I laughed.
so. Laughing is better than brooding.
But the film can't be all bad, right? Credit where credit is due.
Yeah, all right. I laughed a few times, Another thing: Fighting Back. ad-
even at scenes that were supposed to be
See SENSATIONALISM, Page 8


DAWN OF THE DEAD 11:30
KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE 12:00
NICE DREAMS 12:00
ROCKY HORROR 12:00

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