The sad decline of
Jan-Michael Vincent’s career was well underway when he made this humane but
unremarkable urban-violence picture. Vincent does passable work as a dude who
stumbles into a war between ghetto dwellers and the savage street gang terrorizing
them, and Defiance boasts slick
direction by John Flynn as well as appealing supporting turns by Danny Aiello,
Art Carney, and Theresa Saldana. Yet the story is predictable, and the action
quotient isn’t high enough to satisfy the target audience. Furthermore, because
Vincent reportedly spent a fair amount of the production inebriated, Defiance captures the moment just before
too many ho-hum movies and too much booze depleted his movie-star capital. A
few years after making this picture, Vincent took a job playing second banana
to a helicopter on the TV show Airwolf,
and things got much, much worse from there.
In any event, Vincent plays Tommy,
a seaman who temporarily loses his work license, forcing him to linger in New
York City. He takes a tenement apartment and befriends neighbors including Abe
(Carney), Carmine (Aiello), and Marsha (Saldana). These folks live in fear of
the Souls, a violent gang led by Angel (Rudy Ramos). The Souls prey upon
Tommy’s friends, but he says it’s not his problem until the villains cross a
line, triggering Tommy’s violent intervention.
Rare is the movie that deserves
criticism for offering too much character development, but the first hour of Defiance meanders through one pleasant
getting-t0-know-you scene after another, so it takes forever to get to the
action. Had the picture gone deeper, for instance rendering Angel as a
multidimensional character, this intimate approach might have worked. Alas, Defiance exists somewhere between the superficiality
of a good B-movie and the substance of a proper dramatic film. Nonetheless,
it’s a skillfully made project that benefits from extensive location
photography, and Vincent conveys winning vulnerability as well as formidable
physicality. He’s more of a presence than a performer here, but he wasn’t so
far gone that his gifts had completely left him.
Defiance:
FUNKY
5 comments:
Quick housekeeping note: I may be the only person on Earth who notices this, but if I come here and click Sandcastles, I get Same Time Next Year instead -- just like clicking Same Time Next Year does and is supposed to. Anyhow, I remember this movie from 80s TV and got a mild kick out of it. White Line Fever, Vigilante Force, Shadow of the Hawk, Defiance, a TV movie which seems to be alternately called The Tribe or Tribes -- a Jan-Michael Vincent film festival may never be quite excellent, but it has its diversions.
Surprisingly, Vincent was the highest paid actor on prime-time television during that period of time between 1983-1986. His $250,000 per episode salary was higher than even Larry Hagman or Carroll O'Connor.
I spent some time on the set of 'Xtro 2' (1990), and can confirm what a mess poor JMV had become.
I thought I'd pass on some observations, but decided against it - suffice to say he could, amazingly, deliver his lines but beyond that... very sad.
More recently, I Vincent lost a leg to disease -- as if the damage from several drunk-driving accidents wasn't bad enough. Last time I saw him interviewed, he was barely recognizable, his voice was a raspy whisper, and he demonstrated severely limited recall of his own life. Sad indeed.
Jeez, I wasn't aware of the leg.
He was up here (Vancouver) a few times, on 'Shadow Of The Hawk', and one of the incarnations of 'Airwolf' - shot in an ex-brewery. irony!
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