As gritty, dirty, grungy urban thrillers go, The Night Of The Juggler manages to be a pretty unpleasant experience, and that's NOT a recommendation. Car chases, fist fights, sleazy porno joints, gangland violence and a maniac cop are all thrown into the mix but to little avail. Director Robert Butler expends all his energy on the seedy elements but forgets to create sympathetic characters and situations, resulting in one long wallow in cinematic filth. At least the pacing is fairly relentless, though that alone is hardly reason enough to watch.
Ex-cop Sean Boyd (James Brolin) witnesses his daughter's abduction by unhinged weirdo Gus Soltic (Cliff Gorman). After giving chase but losing them in the busy streets of New York, Boyd has to reluctantly seek the aid of the NYPD in tracking down his little girl. Finding that the cops are pretty unhelpful, Boyd goes on a destructive rampage through the impoverished streets in search of his daughter. Along the way he upsets mad cop Sgt Otis Barnes (Dan Hedaya), who pursues him with a shotgun and causes more mayhem than the average criminal might consider pertinent in a day's work. Eventually Boyd discovers that his kid was not the intended target of the kidnapper it was actually a millionaire businessman's daughter that the deranged villain meant to snatch. Still, with his daughter in the hands of the maniac he relentlessly hunts for clues as to her whereabouts and eventually tracks down the abductor and his victim to an underground lair beneath a ruined tower block, where a bloody final confrontation takes place.
Brolin goes through the film wearing a fixed snarl and solving all his problems and frustrations by beating the hell out of everyone who stands in his way. Amazingly, he's the good guy in all this, but if you were to wander into the film late you might not realise that, such is the nature of his destructive and volatile character. Gorman is hopeless as the kidnapper, in a role that provokes more unintentional laughter than fear. Hedaya creates the most memorable character, playing the maniac cop - who becomes a hindrance rather than a help to our hero - with over-the-top glee. The lensing by Victor J. Kemper makes New York appear squalid and unappealing in the extreme now that might be fine in a film like Taxi Driver, where the squalor and filth was dwelled upon very deliberately and added to the disintegration of the De Niro character, but in Night Of The Juggler the setting isn't supported by the bubble-gum plot, and succeeds only in making the film look ugly. There's plenty of foul language and car wrecking going on here, if that's your kind of thing, but on the whole Night Of The Juggler is an unconvincing urban thriller that will have most viewers reaching for the "off" button.
Ex-cop Sean Boyd (James Brolin) witnesses his daughter's abduction by unhinged weirdo Gus Soltic (Cliff Gorman). After giving chase but losing them in the busy streets of New York, Boyd has to reluctantly seek the aid of the NYPD in tracking down his little girl. Finding that the cops are pretty unhelpful, Boyd goes on a destructive rampage through the impoverished streets in search of his daughter. Along the way he upsets mad cop Sgt Otis Barnes (Dan Hedaya), who pursues him with a shotgun and causes more mayhem than the average criminal might consider pertinent in a day's work. Eventually Boyd discovers that his kid was not the intended target of the kidnapper it was actually a millionaire businessman's daughter that the deranged villain meant to snatch. Still, with his daughter in the hands of the maniac he relentlessly hunts for clues as to her whereabouts and eventually tracks down the abductor and his victim to an underground lair beneath a ruined tower block, where a bloody final confrontation takes place.
Brolin goes through the film wearing a fixed snarl and solving all his problems and frustrations by beating the hell out of everyone who stands in his way. Amazingly, he's the good guy in all this, but if you were to wander into the film late you might not realise that, such is the nature of his destructive and volatile character. Gorman is hopeless as the kidnapper, in a role that provokes more unintentional laughter than fear. Hedaya creates the most memorable character, playing the maniac cop - who becomes a hindrance rather than a help to our hero - with over-the-top glee. The lensing by Victor J. Kemper makes New York appear squalid and unappealing in the extreme now that might be fine in a film like Taxi Driver, where the squalor and filth was dwelled upon very deliberately and added to the disintegration of the De Niro character, but in Night Of The Juggler the setting isn't supported by the bubble-gum plot, and succeeds only in making the film look ugly. There's plenty of foul language and car wrecking going on here, if that's your kind of thing, but on the whole Night Of The Juggler is an unconvincing urban thriller that will have most viewers reaching for the "off" button.