Matt Rossi (Tom Berenger) is an ex-boxer turned “Talent Scout” who runs a business supplying strippers to local strip joints in and around Times Square. He has an ex (Melanie Griffith) who is the featured performer at a club that he still pines over. In the midst of running his business (in cooperation with local mobsters) and trying to win back the heart of his ex, a deranged lunatic begins slashing dancers either before or after their shifts. He kills a few but mostly he mutilates them, snipping off fingers and cutting up faces. The cops get involved, of course, and they think it’s mob-related, of course, so they turn the heat up on Matt. Meanwhile, the killer is destroying the business and drawing blood, writing naked manifestos ala Son of Sam. Matt and his men go on a hunt for the killer but fail to find him. He keeps at it until one night, the killer finds Matt’s ex and tries to make her his next victim. But Matt has been watching closely, and he’s there to defend her. Will his boxer moves work against a trained martial artist who is also a psycho? The two men engage in a final battle, to the death!
Fear City is an Abel Ferrara flick that’s coarse and nasty and New York City tough. Neon lights, glittering rain puddles, flashing tits and a pounding synth score combine with mean-spirited violence and psycho rantings to create one hell of a film. This movie is stocked full of actors who weren’t big yet but would achieve some status in the years to come, mostly including Melanie Griffith, who is naked a lot. Billy Dee Williams plays the tough cop and man, he chews the scenery in a great way. There’s lots of machismo swag in this movie and it’s safe to say, they don’t make them like this anymore. Mean, slimy, bitter, but also glossy and just mainstream enough to appeal to fans of Hollywood, this movie somehow manages to out-scumbag movies like The Exterminator but still seem classier. Most of our time is spent with Matt and his agonizing past. We see in flashbacks how his boxing career ended (he beat an opponent to death) and even him as a kid, getting introduced to mob violence at an early age. Berenger plays him as a seething cauldron of anger, thwarted expectations, and grinding failures. He doesn’t walk, he stalks, cigarette dangling from his lips, shirt open to reveal his manly chest, always on the verge of exploding into violence. When he gets his chance at the end, we’re all along for the ride, cheering him on. Besides that, the killer himself is creepy as hell and so utterly sleazy that you want his ass to go down hard.
This is a gritty city flick, full of crime and drugs and murder, and although it isn’t very action-packed, there’s enough slimeball activity going on that your interest will never wain. A portrait of a long-gone NYC, right before the developers took over and turned those parts of town into a cheap, plastic Disneyland, Fear City is a trip into the dark and forbidden, a story populated with the unforgiven and unforgiveable. Grim, loose, swaggering, this is a journey you will not soon forget.
★★★☆