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Out of Xenophon and comic-strips, cinema's great arcade beat-'em-up. "Nine delegates from one hundred gangs" in a Bronx summit, "a whole lot of magic" from dusk till dawn. The messiah (Roger Hill) preaches unity and domination until a bullet shatters the truce, the eponymous tribe takes the blame, it's a long way back to Coney Island. Greasers, skinheads, pagliacci sluggers, sirens and switchblades on rollerblades, one turf after another in a continuous rumble. Swan (Michael Beck) in stoic command, Ajax (James Remar) with the roving eye, in their midst Mercy the mouthy nymph (Deborah Van Valkenburgh). "When did you turn into a fucking diplomat?" Walter Hill's mythic pulp keenly sculpts with neon phosphorescence and graffiti scrawls and angular faces jutting out of the night. In charged compositions like graphic panels on a noble scroll, the plainclothes policewoman on a park bench might be Circe herself. Subway platforms and tunnels, subterranean havens for limpid emotions—red light suffuses a spat, a kiss is backlit by a passing train. "Nowhere to Run" echoes through the streets courtesy of the disc-jockey chorus (cf. Vanishing Point), meanwhile the real culprit (David Patrick Kelly) savors his own villainy. "Man, we got to come to this part of town more often!" A dream and a decathlon, coruscating and rhythmic, for punks who see themselves as warlords until the harsh light of morning. Hill's political subtext emerges in a silent exchange of glances between the grungy heroes and fancy-pants revelers: Van Valkenburgh closes her weary eyes on the entitled kids and opens them back on a vacant seat, dissolve to sunrise and idle Ferris wheel. Revolver and knife on the beach for a Yojimbo showdown, then a beam of soft rock to conclude the synth concert ("It's survival in the city..."). Cinematography by Andrew Laszlo. With Dorsey Wright, Terry Michos, David Harris, Marcelino Sanchez, Brian Tyler, Tom McKitterick, Lynne Thigpen, Dennis Gregory, Paul Greco, Mercedes Ruehl, and Debra Winger.
--- Fernando F. Croce |