Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (July 3, 2023)
Vigilante movies go back many years, but the genre didn’t really pick up steam until Death Wish in 1974. For something in that vein, we go to 1982’s Fighting Back.
In Philadelphia, John D'Angelo (Tom Skerritt) runs a small neighborhood deli. However, crime increasingly threatens both his business and his family.
Fed up, John organizes a neighborhood watch to take on the bad behavior. This leads to dangerous ramifications for John and the others involved.
Going into Back, I figured it would offer a meat-headed “might makes right” statement. Oh, I assumed it would toss in some racist elements as well, given its white hero and roster of minorities as criminals.
And you know what? Back delivers pretty much exactly what I expected.
If you want any nuance, look elsewhere. Better-made movies dig into the dark side of a movement such as John’s, but Back barely acknowledges these issues.
Oh, it pays lip service, as it acknowledges the potential negatives. However, it paints matters in such a simplistic way that it never really hints that we should view John as the extra-legal fascist he is.
From start to finish, Back depicts John as the smart, effective man of action. Cops? Cowardly and ineffective.
Politicians? Corrupt and only concerned with their own power and profits.
John wears the white hat in town and acts as the savior of the streets. Hey, who cares how many laws he breaks as long as he cracks the right heads along the way!
This message will always appeal to some, and I do get it at its core. In a world gone to crap, people want someone to take charge.
However, self-appointed “sheriffs” don’t feel like the right solution. Characters like John live out macho fantasies and not much more.
Again, if approached with some sense of introspection, Back could bring a decent look at the topic. Since it opts for cheesy theatrics instead, it fails to deliver anything insightful.
To justify John’s heavy-handed tactics, the movie goes to comical extremes to depict the brutality of the streets. Back features silly moments like some common street hoods who actually attempt to cut off the finger of John’s mom to get to her rings.
Do sequences like this make a lick of sense? Not really, but they picture the criminals as so extreme that the audience can’t help but accept John’s assaults.
We do find a good cast, though Skerritt seems woefully miscast as the hot-headed Philly man. Skerritt overacts a storm and makes an already lunkheaded character even less believable.
Ultimately, Fighting Back just feels like a right-wing fantasy come to life. Devoid of nuance or depth, it lacks real impact.
