By Erin Free
In this regular column, we drag forgotten made-for-TV movies out of the vault and into the light. This week: the 1981 “urban panic” drama We’re Fighting Back, starring Kevin Mahon, Ellen Barkin, Stephen Lang, Paul McCrane and Joe Morton.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, America’s most prized city, New York, was in hideous decline. The economy was shot, entire neighbourhoods were burnt out, and the entire metropolis was apparently in the grip of a crime wave, with gangs ruling the streets and people too scared to step outside. Or at least that’s how a whole bunch of movies of the time made it look.
While New York was indeed a mess, “urban panic” flicks like Defiance (1980), The Exterminator (1980), Ms. 45 (1981), Fighting Back (1982), Vigilante (1982) and the epochal Death Wish (1974) – and its increasingly deranged and devilishly cartoonish sequels – certainly upped the ante, in often gripping and highly entertaining ways.
One of the most fascinating things to come out of this sense of urban fear was the creation of The Guardian Angels, a non-profit volunteer organisation formed to patrol New York’s violence-wracked neighbourhoods and subways with the aim of stopping crimes in progress by making citizens’ arrests and delivering the perps to the overworked cops. Founded by New Yorker Curtis Sliwa (still active today as a radio host and activist), and highly divisive, The Guardian Angels even had chapters in Sydney and Brisbane!
Though there is no nod to the aforementioned Guardian Angels, the rousingly titled telemovie We’re Fighting Back – which was first broadcast on major US network CBS on April 28, 1981 – is very clearly influenced by the organisation. Directed with admirable earnestness by actor turned prolific TV director Lou Antonio (who has helmed episodes of just about everything, as well as a number of fine telemovies) and punchily penned by T.S Cook (a co-writer on the 1979 classic The China Syndrome, along with a host of TV movies), We’re Fighting Back takes the nuts-and-bolts elements of Curtis Sliwa’s origin story and juices it up with a dash of high drama.
Very interestingly, in the lead role is actor Kevin Mahon, who only had a very limited career, but is firmly installed in cinema history for his minor role in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 masterpiece Raging Bull. Mahon played real-life boxer Tony Janiro, who cops a mind-scrambling in-the-ring beat-down from Robert De Niro’s volcanically jealous Jake LaMotta after his wife, Vicki (Cathy Moriarty), remarks that Janiro is a “good looking kid.” At the end of their fight, Janiro is a mess of blood and battery. “Well, he ain’t good-looking anymore, is he?” Jake LaMotta sneers.
Kevin Mahon only appeared in two other films (1983’s The Last Fight and 1986’s Streets Of Gold…both fight flicks), and while his acting range is certainly limited, he makes for a likeable and engagingly stoic and determined hero in We’re Fighting Back. Mahon is Morgan “Case” Casey, a decent young man sick of the violence and sense of hopelessness that have got their hooks into his neighbourhood in The Bronx. When his father is mugged and beaten, Case has had enough, and springs into action with the help of his friends at the burger joint where he works.
At this point in proceedings, we’d like to pause and note the cracking trio of actors who play Case’s pals: character actor supreme Paul McCrane (who featured on TV’s ER and Fame, and unforgettably played the utterly reprehensible Emil Antonowsky in Paul Verheoven’s 1987 masterpiece RoboCop); equally impressive character actor Ramon Franco (who played malevolent cartel boss Fausto Galvan on TV’s The Bridge, and memorably appeared in Clint Eastwood’s Heartbreak Ridge and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood, as the cinema manager); and 1980s cult hero Brian Tochi aka Takashi in 1984’s Revenge Of The Nerds, Cadet Nogata in 1986’s Police Academy 3: Back In Training, and the voice of Leonardo in 1990’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Phew! Quite the line-up!
As word of their heroic, peacekeeping exploits spreads, Case and his friends are soon joined by more concerned and newly inspired young citizens from around the neighbourhood, and they’re played by an equally impressive group of actors: Michael Wright (The Wanderers, Streamers, V, Oz), Joe Morton (Terminator 2, The Brother From Another Planet), Stephen Lang (Avatar, Don’t Breathe), and the great Ellen Barkin, who steals all her scenes as the tough-talking but endearingly vulnerable Chris Capoletti, the only female in the crew. As expected, they all acquit themselves beautifully, hurling themselves into the film’s plentiful fight scenes with aplomb.
From the synth-punctuated score and graffiti-strewn trains and subways straight out of The Warriors to the shocking images of New York streets that look more like the aftermath of major battles than tributaries of one of the world’s great cities, We’re Fighting Back is thick with distressed urban atmosphere and narrative grit. It’s also often over-the-top and fist-in-the-air inspirational (especially during its unlikely but wholly satisfying conclusion), but that’s all part of the fun with this heart-on-its-sleeve drama that effectively does what so many fine telemovies do: it takes a topical subject and turns it into full-tilt, thought-provoking entertainment.
Availability: We’re Fighting Back is easy to find online, but it’s unfortunately in pretty bad shape.
