{"id":7039,"date":"2024-10-27T14:02:42","date_gmt":"2024-10-27T18:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=7039"},"modified":"2024-10-27T14:02:42","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T18:02:42","slug":"relentless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/27\/relentless\/","title":{"rendered":"Relentless"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Relentless<\/strong> (1989)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 CineTel Films\/Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence and language, nudity, suggestive material, drugs)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: William Lustig\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Phil Alden Robinson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jay Chattaway\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: James Lemmo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 30, 1989 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Judd Nelson, Robert Loggia, Leo Rossi, Meg Foster, Patrick O\u2019Bryan, Ken Lerner, Mindy Seeger, Angel Tompkins, Robert Madrid, Beau Starr, Harriet Hall, Frank Pesce, Ron Taylor, Roy Brocksmith, G. Smokey Campbell, Edward Bunker, Brendan Ryan.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $6.9M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0The thriller Relentless<\/strong> opened on the final weekend (Labor Day) of summer \u201989. Traditionally, that\u2019s a weekend reserved for \u201cdump movies\u201d that have no chance against the big titles of early to mid-summer. I can understand why Relentless<\/strong> fell into that category. It\u2019s from a small independent studio that specialized in low-budget B-movies like Cold Steel, Bulletproof (NOT the Adam Sandler one!) and 976-EVIL. It doesn\u2019t have any bankable names in the cast. Former Brat Packer Judd Nelson\u2019s star had all but faded by the time he agreed to star. In short, it didn\u2019t have mass appeal.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Then you have filmgoers like me who live for movies like Relentless<\/strong>. While it has a decent enough cast, it wasn\u2019t any of them that got me interested. It was director William Lustig, the man behind exploitation classics like Maniac and Vigilante, two of my faves. For the record, he also did the Maniac Cop trilogy, but the two sequels came later. Anyway, I knew with Lustig\u2019s name on it, it had to be pretty good. I needed something to make me forget the abomination I saw the week before, the contemptible John Belushi biopic Wired.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Nelson stars as Arthur \u201cBuck\u201d Taylor, the disturbed son of a cop killed on the job years before who goes on a killing spree after being rejected by the LAPD. He seemingly picks names at random out of the phone book and calls first before going to their house to kill them by their own hand. He leaves a message for his first victim, a movie extra named Todd Arthur (O\u2019Bryan, 976-EVIL), on his answering machine. Todd goes to the cops with the tape, but there\u2019s not much they can do. When he gets home, Buck is waiting for him. After a brief struggle, Buck puts a knife in Todd\u2019s hand and stabs him. Then he leaves the page from the phone book with a message written on it taunting the cops.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The detectives on the case are young hot shot Sam Dietz (Rossi, The Accused) and veteran cop Bill Malloy (Loggia, Jagged Edge). It\u2019s Dietz\u2019s first day as a detective and he\u2019s eager to solve the case while Malloy wants to bide his time waiting for a witness or some concrete clue. As the bodies pile up, it leads to some tension between the new partners. Dietz, a transfer from the NYPD, tells Malloy of his involvement in the Son of Sam case. He thinks they need to be more aggressive in their approach to nabbing the \u201cSunset Killer\u201d as the press dubs him. They soon figure out the connection between Buck\u2019s victims. As they close in on Buck, Buck zeroes in on them. He plans to kill them before they get him. Things reach a head when Buck threatens Dietz\u2019s wife Carol (Foster, They Live) and son Corey (Ryan, Bill & Ted\u2019s Bogus Journey).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Relentless<\/strong> is a solid thriller brimming with gritty B-movie intensity. At the same time, it could have used more of the sleaziness of Vigilante. Instead of shaking down scuzzy street criminals for information, it shows Dietz and his happy home life with a New Age-y wife and a precocious kid who always picks the wrong time to practice his sax. However, when it focuses on the main plot, it\u2019s good. It\u2019s smart too even if the psychology behind Buck is strictly Psych 101. He was routinely abused by his dad while being molded into a future cop. By not being accepted into the academy (for obvious reasons), he feels as though he let his father down. That\u2019s why he snaps. Geez, even a novice could tell you that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Nelson delivers a creepy-as-hell performance as the low-key, dead-eyed killer who barely utters a word as he dispatches his victims with piano wire and a corkscrew. It may not reach the level of Tom Noonan in Manhunter, but it\u2019s solid work from an actor I don\u2019t ordinarily like. Rossi is somewhat hammy as Dietz. It\u2019s hard to separate him from the skin-crawl creep he played in The Accused, but he manages to pull it off in the end. Loggia turns his usual great old grouch performance. I always liked that guy. Foster\u2019s neo-hippy character just feels out of place. 70s exploitation starlet Angel Tomkins (The Teacher) makes a brief appearance as a reporter who helps Dietz lure Buck out into the open with fatal consequences. I wish she had been in it more.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What\u2019s personally interesting about Relentless<\/strong> is that I went home afterwards and watched Lustig\u2019s action-thriller Hit List released earlier in the year. It also starred Rossi. I missed it at the movies so I had a really good night watching two winners from Mr. Lustig. Okay, that\u2019s just a side note of interest to almost no one. I\u2019ll close by saying that Relentless<\/strong> is one of the best unsung movies of the 80s. It came out at the end of an era of great exploitation movies. It\u2019s a sad reminder of the type of movie they just don\u2019t make anymore.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Relentless (1989)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 CineTel Films\/Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence and language, nudity, suggestive material, drugs)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: William Lustig\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Phil Alden Robinson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jay Chattaway\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: James Lemmo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 30, 1989 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Judd Nelson, Robert Loggia, Leo Rossi, Meg Foster, Patrick O\u2019Bryan, Ken Lerner, Mindy Seeger, Angel Tompkins, Robert Madrid, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7579,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-suspense-thrillers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Relentless-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7039"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7581,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7039\/revisions\/7581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}