Walking the Edge – Fun City

Director: Norbert Meisel
Screenplay: Curt Allen
Starring: Nancy Kwan, Robert Forster, Joe Spinell, A Martinez, James McIntire, Wayne Woodson, Doug Toby, Ivy Bethune
Country: USA
Running Time: 94 min
Year: 1985

Robert Forster had a long and varied career. An early significant lead role came in Haskell Wexler’s critically acclaimed and influential Medium Cool. Following that he seemed to jump between supporting roles in major films, such as The Black Hole, and lead roles in lower-budget genre movies before drifting off into obscurity for much of the late 80s and early 90s.

However, when Quentin Tarantino cast him in Jackie Brown, which earnt him a long-overdue Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, Forster shot back into the limelight. Yes, he still stayed largely on the sidelines but nonetheless appeared in a number of notable and respected films and TV programmes, alongside a fair share of indies, helping him once again become a recognisable face.

He worked hard right up until the end, when he died in 2019 at the age of 78.

It may have been Tarantino that gave Forster’s career a shot in the arm during the final twenty years of his life but it’s his fine work as an actor in the late 60s through to the 80s that first caught the Jackie Brown director’s eye.

Fun City are looking back to a title that maybe didn’t make a lot of money or get lavished with praise when it was first released but is more than likely a film that will have helped turn a young Tarantino onto Forster. That title is Walking the Edge.

Shot in 1982, likely to cash in on the success of the same year’s Death Wish 2, Walking the Edge wasn’t actually released until 1985, due to legal issues. It opens not with Forster’s character, who we’ll get to later, but with the family of Christine (Nancy Kwan). We’re introduced to her whilst a criminal gang led by Brusstar (Joe Spinell) holds Christine and her son hostage, whilst they wait for her husband (Phil H. Fravel) to get home.

Unbeknownst to Christine, her husband was a drug dealer and the gang are there to take him out. Indeed, they kill the man and the couple’s son, but Christine manages to escape.

Traumatised by the incident and shocked at the news of her husband’s secret life, she sets out to get revenge and kill the members of the gang that took her son away from her.

Along the way, however, she gets into the cab of Jason Walk (Forster) and gets him embroiled in the chaos of her unhinged quest for revenge.

Jason has already got problems of his own though. He’s getting trodden on by the gamblers he’s hired to collect money from (he’s a runner for an illegal bookie – the cab is a cover job) and he’s just caught his girlfriend (or maybe wife?) cheating on him. Even when he tried to find comfort in the bed of a local barmaid he doesn’t manage to get it up. So, when he gets unwittingly involved in Christine’s bloody troubles, Jason gets pushed over the edge (that I guess he’s been walking on…)

Walking the Edge wasn’t quite what I expected from how it was advertised. Though it seems like a straightforward revenge or vigilante film in places (and certainly leans that way towards the end), it’s really about an emasculated man regaining his masculinity (most obviously demonstrated in the aforementioned botched sexual encounter). Meanwhile, you have a female character on an opposing trajectory, starting out as an unhinged vengeful woman, but eventually calming down and finding a little more sense.

It’s not just the plot or theme that surprises though. The general tone is unusual for a film that looks like a Death Wish clone on paper. Rather than offering a grim, action-heavy thriller from start to finish, Walking the Edge spends a lot of time with the characters, watching them as they hang out in-between more dramatic incidents. We even get to know the gang in places, with Brusstar and his cronies eulogising a fallen comrade in one scene.

Forster excels in this style of naturalistic filmmaking which reminded me more of Hollywood in the late-70s than the mid-80s (though it was shot earlier in the decade, as mentioned). He’s wonderful in the film, with a relatable, everyman nature and understated charisma. He gets some of the most memorable lines too, which are often quite amusing, such as his “shut the f**k up, I’m whacking off!” exclamation to clear a bathroom he’s trying to clean up after killing someone. On the other end of the spectrum, “You need three hugs a day, just to survive” is not a line you’d expect from the star of what is marketed as a brutal vigilante thriller.

Whilst a couple of the minor players are a bit wooden, most of the main cast are decent too. Nancy Kwan, who was the director, Norbert Meisel’s wife, does a pretty good job of playing the traumatised wife at the centre of everything. It’s the gang members and their leader, played by cult favourite Joe Spinell, who are the most fun to watch though. Spinell is deliciously sadistic and psychotic.

Meisel, who sadly never made anything else particularly notable, first came to Hollywood as an actor. This might explain why the film’s strengths lie in the character work and performances rather than the action set pieces.

Don’t get me wrong, there is violence in the film and the set pieces are memorable too, but largely due to how grisly they are, rather than being particularly well executed. There aren’t a lot of murders or action scenes but when they come they pack a punch through their eye-opening brutality.

Due to its budget, it’s a little rough around the edges, with some slightly ropey edits and dodgy ADR in one scene, but it all adds to the scuzzy, naturalistic charm of its presentation.

Overall then, Walking the Line offers a subtly offbeat spin on revenge and vigilante movies. Its laid-back, slow-burn sections might put some off, but there are enough nasty shocks to keep gorehounds on their toes and lovers of grungy 70s-style genre movies will find much to enjoy.

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