Vigilante

William Lustig plays the material straight, and the seriousness gives it weight. After his family is destroyed and the courts let the culprits walk, a factory worker is recruited into a neighbourhood vigilante group, and the film follows his slide with more grimness than triumph. Robert Forster is very good as the ordinary man pushed over the edge.

It is closer to the despair of the era than to a power fantasy, shot in a decaying New York and scored by Jay Chattaway. The violence is presented as sad rather than satisfying.

A cut above the Death Wish imitators, thanks to Forster and Lustig's control.